The Great Believers

The Great Believers (2018) is the fourth novel by Chicago-based writer Rebecca Makkai. The novel alternates between the stories of a group of friends—most of them gay men diagnosed with AIDS—in Chicago during the mid-80s to the early 90s—and the story of a woman searching for her estranged daughter in Paris, 30 years later. The Great Believers won several awards, including the ALA Carnegie Medal, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, ALA Stonewall Award, and the Chicago Review of Books Award. The novel was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. This guide features the 2019 Penguin Books edition.

Plot Summary

The Great Believers alternates between the narrative of Yale Tishman—a gay man living in Chicago in 1985—and Yale’s friend, Fiona Marcus, who reflects on her memories of Yale and his friends 30 years later. The novel begins on the day of Fiona’s brother Nico’s funeral. Nico has recently died from AIDS. Though Nico’s family holds a traditional funeral at a church, most of the people closest to him—including Fiona—hold their own life celebration at the home of gay photographer Richard Campo. There, Yale gathers with Fiona; his partner, a British man named Charlie Keene who runs a publication called Out Loud Chicago; Nico’s widowed partner, Terrence; a handsome PhD student named Teddy Naples; a dashing political activist named Asher Glass; and a flirty, light-hearted young actor named Julian Ames. When Richard shows a photo slideshow of Nico with his friends, Yale is overcome with emotion and retreats to mourn alone a room upstairs.

Later, Charlie hears a rumor that Yale retreated upstairs to have sex with Teddy, and doesn’t seem to trust Yale when he denies this rumor. Charlie is a possessive partner and a staunch advocate for protected sex and monogamy. He often makes Yale feel guilty for even the most fleeting attractions to other men.

Yale’s career (working in development for the Brigg Gallery at Northwestern University) begins to flourish when Fiona’s great aunt, Nora Lerner, offers a large donation of artwork to the gallery. Yale’s excitement over Nora’s collection is dampened when a number of his friends—including Nico’s former partner, Terrence—become sick. Charlie tests HIV positive and reveals that he had sex with Julian on the night of Nico’s funeral, when he felt jealous over Yale’s disappearance upstairs. Angry about Charlie’s hypocritical behavior and distressed over the possibility that he might have AIDS, Yale leaves their apartment. He spends the rest of the novel moving from place to place. Yale tests negative and begins to feel cautiously optimistic about his own health. His boss at Northwestern, Bill, assigns him a young, attractive male intern named Roman. Roman seems sexually naive and inexperienced, and Yale embarks on a casual relationship with him. Later, however, he learns that Roman has had multiple sexual partners, and that he has ultimately contracted the virus from Roman.

Thirty years later, Fiona reconciles with her own complicated feelings about Nico and Yale’s deaths, the AIDS epidemic, and her own family as she searches for her estranged daughter, Claire, in Paris. She believes that Claire is in Paris with Kurt Pearce, both previously living in a cult in Colorado. Gradually, a private investigator tracks down both Kurt and Claire. In the midst of Fiona and Claire’s reconciliation, their lives are disrupted by the 2015 terrorist attacks. As Fiona slowly begins to mend old wounds with Claire, she revisits feelings of guilt in the home of Richard Campo, a gay photographer who was part of her close-knit circle in Chicago. As Fiona starts to let go of her shame, she is visited by Julian (whom she’d always assumed had died in the 80s). Julian explains that he managed to hold onto life “until the good drugs” were introduced. Fiona deals with complicated relief and mixed emotions, feeling as though she has encountered a ghost.

The novel ends with a scene at Richard’s art show: a 30-year memorial to his friends from Chicago. The memorial film plays on an endless loop, suggesting a poetic recurrence of memory, loss, and love.

With its explorations of Chicago gay history, gay rights activism, the ethics of sex and relationships amidst an epidemic, the complexities of art and collaboration, and the experience of survivor’s guilt, The Great Believers is a deep and sensitive exploration of the ongoing AIDS crisis. The novel also offers poignant observations of the overlaps between the Lost Generation of World War I and the more modern day Lost Generation of gay men. In the New York Times, Michael Cunningham described The Great Believers as “an antidote to our general urge to forget what we’d rather not remember […] an absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis.”