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A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster. The Great Believers has become a critically acclaimed, indelible piece of literature; it was selected as one of New York Times Best 10 Books of the Year, a Washington Post Notable Book, a Buzzfeed Book of the Year, a Skimm Reads pick, and a pick for the New York Public Library's Best Books of the year.
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3.5/4 stars
I think this book was longer than it needed to be, but the end was so beautiful and the book dealt with grief, loss, friendship, and found family. I also had some trouble with the large amount of characters to remember at times, so I think there could've been some paring down of people involved, but I thought Yale and Fiona in particular were very well-developed characters. Also didn't really feel like there was a huge tie between Richard and the general group of friends in the 80s - like why did he host Nico's memorial and then played such a big role in Fiona's life in 2015?? idk... still, I think it was worth it for how the end was...
A couple of spoilery things I had an issue with:
the part about asher always being in love with yale (and vice versa) felt a bit out of the blue. maybe I just wasn’t picking up on it, but the idea that they’d been in love for years felt thrown in at the last minute.
Also, the part about Julien being alive felt like it was supposed to be a huge reveal but it really wasn't imo...
And, the part about Fiona giving birth while Yale was dying felt a bit cliche or on-the-nose, but I'm a bit ambivalent about that...
but some of my favorite quotes:
-If you learned new details about someone who was gone, then he wasn’t vanishing. He was getting bigger, realer. (26)
-“…I think it was one of those things where you can’t let go of how you first saw the person.” “We never let go of that,” Cecily said. “I mean, even for parents—that’s never not your baby, you know?” “I think you’re right.” As he got sicker, it was more and more often how he though of people— of Charlie, certainly, and of everyone else here or gone: not as the sum of all the disappointments, but as every beginning they’d ever represented, every promise. (396)
-“But no one ever talks about how long [life] is… If we could just be on earth at the same place and same time as everyone we loved, if we could be born together and die together, it would be so simple. And it’s not. But listen: You two are on the planet at the same time. You’re in the same place now. That’s a miracle. I just want to say that.” (401)
These moments make this book absolutely worth the 400-something pages. (can you tell I never read long books lol)
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