It burrows, sight unseen, or perhaps merely uncomfortably so that I ruminate Chicagoan and Parisian without having been then nor of.
This book paints a compelling picture of Chicago in the 1980s as AIDS ravaged the gay community. In some ways, it reminded me of A Little Life, though it wasn't as jarring or sensational.
This story had the feeling of a train running the tracks – I knew where it was headed from the opening pages, and yet, despite its predictability, the ride still showed me thing I hadn't considered before. It's easy now, in 2020, to forget what it was like when HIV arrived on the scene. And since I was still in middle school when it really wrecked havoc, I didn't have any solid first-hand sense of the experience. So it was interesting to re-live the 80s, but through the perspective of young gay men who went from having it all to watching their friends die terrible, inexplicable deaths.
Anyway. I'm giving this three stars because it was …
This book paints a compelling picture of Chicago in the 1980s as AIDS ravaged the gay community. In some ways, it reminded me of A Little Life, though it wasn't as jarring or sensational.
This story had the feeling of a train running the tracks – I knew where it was headed from the opening pages, and yet, despite its predictability, the ride still showed me thing I hadn't considered before. It's easy now, in 2020, to forget what it was like when HIV arrived on the scene. And since I was still in middle school when it really wrecked havoc, I didn't have any solid first-hand sense of the experience. So it was interesting to re-live the 80s, but through the perspective of young gay men who went from having it all to watching their friends die terrible, inexplicable deaths.
Anyway. I'm giving this three stars because it was well written and an interesting read, but I'm probably unfairly comparing it to A Little Life and deducting a few stars because I didn't become as attached to the characters. Definitely worth reading.
Evocative and emotional, for being set intimately in Chicago & Paris, for the terror of love and despair in the AIDS epidemic, for dying obscured and forgotten, and for the well-wrought parallel to the Lost Generation's hopelessness, potentiality, and chaos. At least, as far as I or the author can say from wholly outside.
About 675,000 Americans have died of AIDS since the epidemic began in the early 1980s. I knew none of them. This book, [a:Rebecca Makkai|3134707|Rebecca Makkai|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1313468002p2/3134707.jpg]'s fourth, makes me feel like I did.
She did loads of research but it doesn't read like that; I looked up the death number elsewhere. The chapters alternate between the mid 1980s and and early 90s to 2015. The Great Believers has its sad moments (how could it not?) but many of humor and many others of simple understanding and intelligent empathy.
Makkai has the ability good writers have to capture little, telling moments and describe them well, like this one about what a main character does after submitting his resignation and returning to his desk:
Yale opened his top drawer. There were at least fifty ballpoint pens, most inherited with the desk. He took one and squiggled a line on his legal pad. It …
About 675,000 Americans have died of AIDS since the epidemic began in the early 1980s. I knew none of them. This book, [a:Rebecca Makkai|3134707|Rebecca Makkai|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1313468002p2/3134707.jpg]'s fourth, makes me feel like I did.
She did loads of research but it doesn't read like that; I looked up the death number elsewhere. The chapters alternate between the mid 1980s and and early 90s to 2015. The Great Believers has its sad moments (how could it not?) but many of humor and many others of simple understanding and intelligent empathy.
Makkai has the ability good writers have to capture little, telling moments and describe them well, like this one about what a main character does after submitting his resignation and returning to his desk:
Yale opened his top drawer. There were at least fifty ballpoint pens, most inherited with the desk. He took one and squiggled a line on his legal pad. It didn't work at first, but then it did. He put it in the empty mug by his left hand, and then he forgot what he was doing and sat there blinking. Then he remembered and grabbed the next pen and tried it, and it was dead, and he dropped it into the trash can, where it landed too loudly. The next two were dry, the next clotted, the next fine. He went through all the pens. Twelve good ones. Two with Northwestern logos, a few plain Bics, a couple of fancy erasable ones, a few cheap ones advertising insurance companies. At least Yale guessed that was the writing on the sides; he couldn't focus his eyes.
Stunning. Remarkable. Hard to put into words. Having lived in SF in the mid to late 80s and lost more friends than I can count, parts of this were terribly difficult to read.
