My book club recently read The Great Believers, and while there was some discussion about some of the author’s choices (which I will get to later), it was one we all really liked reading.

From the publisher’s summary:

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.

I was very young when the AIDS crisis first hit in the States. And I remember my mom admonishing me, when the news about it first came out, not to eat or drink after anyone. “They’re not really sure all the way AIDS is transmitted right now. Better to be safe,” I remember her saying. I didn’t know anyone who was gay (well, in hindsight, I’m sure I did. I just didn’t know they were gay). I didn’t have the concept of entire communities being decimated by an illness. And that is where The Great Believers made me think.

I had such empathy for this community of men, who had become each other’s family, as one by one they said goodbye as another and then another and then another was diagnosed with AIDS. Fiona’s unconditional acceptance of her brother, and her adoption of his friends as her own family, was a powerful thing to read.

My biggest criticism of the book, also shared by my fellow book club members, is the story of Fiona and her daughter Claire. The estrangement that was the conflict between them seemed almost extraneous. We had no real backstory on why Claire felt so abandoned and antagonistic against her mother and why there was such animosity amongst people who had been friends. It was a plot point to move the story, but I didn’t find myself terribly invested in it.

I still recommend The Great Believers. I love a book that grabs me on an emotional level, that makes me think and feel empathy for so many people. Reading it against the backdrop of knowing that I have close friends and family in the LGBTQ+ community, and the ongoing assault on their rights makes it more personal. I can’t imagine people I care about in this situation. I can’t imagine the fear and grief and anger this community suffered at the onset of the AIDS crisis.

I don’t recommend this one as a beach read. But I do recommend you read it.