It's about Yale Tishman in Chicago in the 80s, as his art world career begins to take off, watching his friends - his family (one genius conceit of the novel is the family saga structure Makkai uses to tell these friends' story) - decimated by the AIDS crisis during its American height. It's the kind of book that throws open the door of a world and welcomes you inside. The Great Believers is the kind of book that reminds me why I love reading in the first place, a book that lets you live a part of someone else's life.

It's a story that draws guffaws in one moment and tears in the next and captures the friends-are-your-family ethos that was such an important part of LGBT culture. Like so many other novels I’m drawn to, it’s also about the legacy that parents pass on to their children. Makkai’s third novel is a tour-de-force exploration of a group of friends during the AIDS crisis, and how the epidemic casts its shadow more than a generation later. Thirty years later, Fiona Marcus, connected to Yale through her long-deceased brother Nico, sets out to find her missing daughter Claire in Paris, last seen living as part of a Colorado cult. Named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, The Seattle Times, Bustle, Newsday, AM New York, BookPage, St.In mid-1980s Chicago, gallery executive Yale Tishman tries to help an elderly woman stage an art show that includes her obscure lover. 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. 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. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. 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. An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis.” -The New York Times Book ReviewĪ dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler

The great believers amy poehler