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4.45 AVERAGE
4.45 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Adding my voice to the chorus of cheers for Rebecca Makkai's THE GREAT BELIEVERS. The book is beautiful and moving and broke my heart, as great fiction does. It is such an accomplished work, spanning decades, tracing the impact of the AIDS epidemic, its devastation and losses, on its characters, telling a great story at the same time. A+ without a curve.
challenging
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A devastating read. One of very few (perhaps the only?) books I’ve read that deal directly with the height of the AIDS crisis. I kept waiting for a twist, but there wasn’t any. Yale still dies at the end, and Fiona still isn’t reconciled with Claire at the end. But maybe that’s sort of the point? It made me sad and existential and it was very long for what it was, but I feel a lot of empathy for that generation, that lost generation.
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
This book was really enlightening for what it would have been like to live through the horrors of the 1980’s aids epidemic. I didn’t love the mother/daughter plot, it seemed like I was missing something. It would have been fulfilling to center the story on the group of friends.
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Read this book.
It is riveting. Honestly, I wasn't prepared for how much I loved this book. Makkai's writing strikes a wonderful balance of intellect and emotional charge; the work travels in between the hackneyed and the unfounded, swaying much closer to the latter.
Given the parallel storylines (Chicago, late 80s-early 90s, AIDS crisis/Paris, 2015, searching for an estranged daughter), the story remains remarkably intact. Some reviews I have read, notably Michael Cunningham's in the New York Times, hint that the reader may desire a stronger purpose for the simultaneously unfolding narrative. For me, the stories connect enough to put them in the same world while, at the same time, different enough that what you learn and experience in one somehow lets you delve deeper in the other.
If I remember Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides because I think the last page of the novel is some of the best prose ever written, I would I say I will always remember The Great Believers because Makkai's description of the onset and experience of death is on a plane that I am not sure I have experienced in a piece of fiction. The characters' embrace, resistance, and acceptance of death is nuanced and particular to each character while maintaining a sense of universality. From the first few pages, we preview death - where it will take place, how it will take place - and yet each experience feels new and ethereal. She writes a death scene like a Polaroid developing in reverse and it is wonderful.
At one point, one of the characters wonders, Where does all the love go, when we lose someone? It bleeds outside of the pages of the novel and into the heart of the reader.
It is riveting. Honestly, I wasn't prepared for how much I loved this book. Makkai's writing strikes a wonderful balance of intellect and emotional charge; the work travels in between the hackneyed and the unfounded, swaying much closer to the latter.
Given the parallel storylines (Chicago, late 80s-early 90s, AIDS crisis/Paris, 2015, searching for an estranged daughter), the story remains remarkably intact. Some reviews I have read, notably Michael Cunningham's in the New York Times, hint that the reader may desire a stronger purpose for the simultaneously unfolding narrative. For me, the stories connect enough to put them in the same world while, at the same time, different enough that what you learn and experience in one somehow lets you delve deeper in the other.
If I remember Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides because I think the last page of the novel is some of the best prose ever written, I would I say I will always remember The Great Believers because Makkai's description of the onset and experience of death is on a plane that I am not sure I have experienced in a piece of fiction. The characters' embrace, resistance, and acceptance of death is nuanced and particular to each character while maintaining a sense of universality. From the first few pages, we preview death - where it will take place, how it will take place - and yet each experience feels new and ethereal. She writes a death scene like a Polaroid developing in reverse and it is wonderful.
At one point, one of the characters wonders, Where does all the love go, when we lose someone? It bleeds outside of the pages of the novel and into the heart of the reader.
I forgot to rate this right after I finished it. I think I liked it.
challenging
emotional
sad
Devastating. Wonderful.