Los optimistas (The Great Believers)

Escrito por Rebecca Makkai

Narrado por Ana C. Doñoro

Yale Tishman es uno de los muchos amigos de Nico que se han reunido para honrar su memoria en una pequeña fiesta. A la misma hora, no muy lejos de allí, se celebra en una iglesia el funeral oficial, organizado por la familia, que ha dejado bien claro que sus amigos no son bienvenidos. Es Chicago, es 1985, y esos amigos son homosexuales. En otros tiempos, tal vez, Yale lo habría tenido todo para ser feliz: una relación estable, un grupo de amigos muy unido y una carrera prometedora. Sin embargo, es Chicago, es 1985, y el SIDA causa verdaderos estragos: uno a uno, sus amigos enferman, y cada día que pasa el virus estrecha más su cerco alrededor de Yale. Pronto, solo podrá apoyarse en la hermana pequeña de Nico, Fiona. Tres décadas después, Fiona está en París, tratando de localizar a su hija, que hace años le dio la espalda y desapareció. Hospedada en la casa de un amigo de los viejos tiempos, Fiona aún lidia con las devastadoras secuelas que aquella época terrible tuvo para su vida y la relación con su hija. Entrelazando las historias de Yale y Fiona, Rebecca Makkai nos ofrece una formidable novela que reflexiona sobre la enfermedad y la muerte, pero ante todo sobre el poder de la vida, el amor y la amistad. Los optimistas recrea con fidelidad el día a día de la comunidad gay en los ochenta, la paradójica atmósfera de vitalidad y esperanza por las libertades ganadas, y de incertidumbre y miedo en una época en la que un test positivo equivalía a una sentencia de muerte. Brutal y emotiva, esta novela retrata con gran humanidad a unos seres optimistas que incluso en medio del más pavoroso desastre continúan creyendo en la bondad.

• Idioma: Español
• Editorial: BookaVivo
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 31 may 2022
• ISBN: 9781638117698

Comentarios para Los optimistas (The Great Believers)

[kheders_1 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

very moved by the various stories and how they interconnected. AIDS, Children that steer in a different direction, cults, art, lovers and more all in one.

[cherybear · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

The chapters flip between the 1980s in Chicago, and 2015 in Paris. The story of Yale, a young gay man, and Fiona, the sister of Yale's friend Nico, begins at Nico's "funeral." My heart ached for the gay men who fought and lost their battles with AIDS. The parallels to the COVID epidemic are uncanny. I identified with both Fiona and Yale. Some plot lines seem extraneous, and some underdeveloped. But overall an excellent book.

[shazjhb · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Amazing book set at the beginning of the AIDS crisis in Chicago and Paris 1920 and 2015. AIDS was so frightening especially in the beginning when no one knew how it was transmitted. Health care workers were on the front lines and the loss of so many young men was awful. Loved Paris both from Nora point of view and Fiona.

[tinkerbellkk · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Loved this book even though it was so very sad. With two timelines - one in the 80's and one in the 2010's it dealt with the AIDS crisis and the ongoing devastating effect it had on so many. The characters were very well created and the story well told. Highly recommended.

[vintagereader · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This book. That time. That beautiful, horrible time. I don't know how much of this Rebecca Makkai took from her own life and how much she got from research, but I remember the tone people would use when they'd say someone was sick. I remember my friends coming up with reasons not to participate in the campus blood drive because they couldn't answer the intake questions honestly. I remember the rumors and the misinformation and the awful jokes that I can't believe somehow survived to make it into this book. And of course, there's a place in my memory for the young men I knew who never got to be middle-aged men.

For once I didn't mind the back-and-forth timeline, although I was far more drawn in to Yale's story than Fiona's. I liked the sense of time rolling on, of themes repeating from generation to generation. I loved the pacing, how it started out slowly but the intensity just kept building, even though it still seemed slow. Basically, I just loved the whole book. It's the best book I've read this year, and this has been a year of really good books.

[japaul22 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

What a wonderful, wonderful book. Makkai has brought to life the tragedy, fear, and trauma of the AIDS crisis in 1980s Chicago. She does this through wonderfully real characters, the kind of characters who you think about and wonder what they are doing while you aren't reading the book. It's sad - I rarely cry at books and couldn't contain it here - but it's so beautifully done that it isn't as depressing as it could be, somehow. Makkai uses an alternating timeline, between 1985-90 and 2015, and sometimes these don't work for me, but here I thought it was perfect. Though I never wanted to leave the 1980s characters, flashing forward to 2015 helped put the crisis in perspective - sometimes deepening the sadness, sometimes showing the lasting trauma it cause for those who survived, and sometimes giving glimmers of hope. Highly recommended - please give it a try!

[dreesie-1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I had heard this book described as "the best of the year", and while I'm not sure I agree, I see it. This book is amazing and heartbreaking and well-written and just so sad yet somehow hopeful as well. ———Alternating chapters follow 2 interconnected timelines. The first, 1985-1990, looks at a friend group of mostly young gay men living/working in Boystown, Chicago, as HIV/AIDS sweeps through the country and their community. Nico, Terrence, Yale, Charlie, Richard, Teddy, Asher, Julian, Nico's sister Fiona, Yale's co-worker Cicely, Fiona and Nico's elderly great aunt Nora--all are trying to figure out how to fight, what to do, how to deal with medical insurance and disapproving parents. The latter timeline, 2015, looks at the survivors of that time and examines how affected their lives, their choices, their careers, their relationships.I thought Nora was a great character--an elderly woman who lived through the chaos of being in Paris as WWI started, and who fled back to the US, losing her love, her friends, her school, her dreamed-of future. As the older family member to accept her great-nephew Nico, she understood what it meant to be "the arty one", and she gave Nico and Fiona the mental support she could to help them. And her art from that time tied the characters together in 1985/1986. But these chapters are rough. Some are so hopefully, others so painfully sad and difficult.Then the 2015 chapters are surprising. How the survivors' lives turned out--how the choices they made after the late 80s/early 90s reflected what they went through--but how their later choices affected others who were not even alive, or were children. These characters are all so well done, they feel like real people. And many of the places and events mentioned were real, or stand-ins for real places, as mentioned in the author's note and Acknowledgments. People who survived Boystown in the 80/90s were some of Makkai's early readers. Makkai does not mention her connection, or how she came to write this book.

[strandbooks_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

If Oprah still had her book club, she’d put a sticker on The Great Believers! The writing is excellent and the story is emotionally devastating. It flips back and forth from 1985 Chicago and 2015 Paris. The Chicago portion follows a group of young gay men as they become infected with AIDS. The Paris portion focuses on the sister of one of the men who died and how her life and subsequently her daughter’s life was shaped by those years of caring for her brother and his friends. As much as it is about the AIDS epidemic and being gay in the 1980s, the parent/child relationship dynamics was a major part too.(For my development friends, there is an interesting sub-plot where one of the main characters works in a university advancement office for an art gallery, specifically on a contested planned gift.)

[mcelhra · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

The Great Believers is about a group of gay men in Chicago in the 1980s and how their lives are devastated by the AIDS crisis. It also flashes forward to the present day and the life of Fiona, the sister of Nico, one of the men in the group who succumbed to the disease. She was good friends with all the men in the group and watched a lot of them die one by one. That experience profoundly affected her life and she still grapples with it. At the same time, she’s on a mission to find her adult daughter, who ran away to join a cult.The main character in the 1980s is Yale. He’s the type of man who is so sweet and kind that it made my heart hurt anytime something even remotely bad happened to him. He works for an art museum and is trying to get an elderly lady to donate her art collection without her greedy relatives interfering.This book is a sweeping epic with many intricately intertwining threads. The characters were complicated and well-drawn and there were a few surprising twists. The author did extensive research and although the story is fictional, the events surrounding the evolution of the AIDS epidemic in Chicago are real. It’s heartbreaking how horrible victims were treated back then, even by health care professionals. If Rebecca Makkai’s previous novels are even half as wonderful as The Great Believers, then I will gobble them up. The Great Believers is a National Book Award finalist and is on all sorts of best books of 2018 lists. It deserves it all. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

[detailmuse · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This novel of friendship and tragedy is set in 1980s/'90s Chicago at the height of the AIDS crisis. It follows Yale Tishman (a development director for an art museum) and his group of gay friends, and alternates threads with the sister of one of those young men, following her decades later in 2015 Paris (whose story I did not connect with until very late in the book). It’s compelling and important, a sort of homage. It’s exactly the time that I moved to Chicago as a newlywed, and become acquainted with an artist who had a gallery in the neighborhood of the novel, and who died of AIDS. It felt like being in that time again and I have been bereft since reading.The last sentences of the novel won’t mean much (and probably won't spoil for those who haven’t read it yet), but they’re the saddest sweetest sentences I’ve read in a long time and I want to save them for myself:She expected the film to end right there, but instead, … the whole film looped again. There they all stood, … boys with hands in pockets, waiting for everything to begin.

[quirkylibrarian · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Back and forth between the 1980's AIDS crisis in Chicago and 2015 Paris where Fiona (sister to one of the AIDS victims and a caregiver to his friends as they died) searches for her estranged daughter. Against the backdrop of Yale's acquisition of a private art collection for the university gallery, a collection held by an elderly woman in Door County, WI whose grandniece, Fiona is a central character- to Yale, to the dying men in the gay community etc. The AIDS crisis is its own character in this gorgeous, slower paced novel.

[jphamilton-1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

The Great Believers is a memorable novel, for both the brutal times it portrayed in Chicago, and the beautifully drawn characters it introduced. It had two timelines, one from the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, as well as a follow-up of some of the characters in 2015. It was a very powerful telling of the loves and many losses of the book’s characters in the eighties, and the desperate and sharply divided politics of those times. It’s a very tough book to read at times, as it seems that the characters were always close to losing someone else. Adding another fascinating 1980s storyline, Yale and his friend Fiona find themselves central to discovering a major collection of 1920s Parisian art—possibly worth millions—hidden away with Nora (Fiona’s aunt), an elderly lady in Michigan. In the Paris of the twenties, Nora worked as a model for Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Léger, and Tsuguharu Foujita, among others, and her payment was an occasional piece of art by the then struggling artists. Yale works for a gallery at Northwestern University and this find could (if authentic) put them on the map. Using the Fiona connection, Yale’s team works with the generous Nora, and tries to avoid the rather hostile heirs. A curious part of the story is that there are a few simple works by a completely unknown artist (Ranko Novak) that Nora insists be displayed in any exhibition of these artists. Sadly, by the time the works are exhibited, Nora has died, and Yale—who had promised that Nora’s love Novak would be included—has been removed from the project. The 80s crisis took a serious toll on the relationship between Yale and his lover Charlie, who worked an independent newspaper, as well as Fiona and her estranged daughter Claire. Fiona becomes more central to the 2015 story, as she returns to Paris to search for the lost Claire, who had joined a cult, and then moved on.It will be a rare person who can read this book without remembering the anger, despair, fear, and ignorance of those times. The book is difficult to read at times, but it is stunning, and you’ll carry its story and characters with you for some time.

[scottjpearson · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I find the topic of HIV and AIDS absolutely fascinating – from the horrific sufferings of gay men to its origins in Haiti and Africa, from the elusiveness of the virus away from antivirals to biomedical efforts to limits its transmission, from AZT and HAART therapy to bone marrow transplants, from political stigma and oppression by GOP leaders to GOP efforts to cure the African epidemic, from the frustrating story of decades-long search for an effective vaccine to the human story of finding hope in impossible circumstances. There are so many storylines and so much work still to do. Makkai adds her fictional story to this historical symphony and shows the resilient, admirable hope that can be found in the spirits of gay men who triumphed over social shunning and disease-ridden death.The first thing one notices about this book is that it won many prestigious awards. (Incidentally, each one of them is deserved and well-earned.) It gives an authentic voice to the homosexual community in 1980s Chicago. It is masterfully told by combining two storylines in two different decades from two different perspectives. This forking is yet combined to a united story with a realistic depth enhanced by both aspects. Despite the sadness, horror, and stigma, Makkai accentuates the hope found in the LGBTQ+ community.The story centers around two characters: Yale Tishman and his friend Fiona. The 1980s storyline, told with Yale’s perspective, opens with Fiona’s brother and Yale’s friend Nico dying of AIDS. Nico and Fiona’s family stigmatized Nico’s homosexuality, but Fiona refuses to let such prejudice stand by rebelling. Nico’s funeral is attended by a plethora of gay men, all of whom would soon become potential targets of this evil yet contagious virus.The 2015 storyline, told from Fiona’s perspective, opens in Paris where she is trying to track down her estranged daughter. She ends up staying with a friend from this same community from the 1980s, one who photographically documented the Chicago epidemic. These experiences make her come to grips with how this dramatic crisis altered the foundation of her life.This book represents a sophisticated take on this oft-neglected pandemic. Makkai’s wizardry in storytelling draws the reader in and tantalizes her/his emotional core all the way to the end. She shows how the narrative of HIV/AIDS has bent history’s arc and produced its own lost generation, much like World War I. While this book, filled with a myriad of themes, is aimed for more mature readers, it will not disappoint in its human depth.

[bookappeal · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

Makkai immerses readers into a culture many may not understand. The lives of homosexual men in Chicago's Boystown just as the AIDS epidemic was taking hold proves to be fertile ground for exploring friendship, love, loyalty, fear, and trust. A contemporary plot follows Fiona, whose older brother died from AIDS, as she tries to find her estranged adult daughter in France. A third storyline revolves around an ailing older woman in 1986 who wants to bequeath potentially valuable paintings to an upstart museum. The three stories don't converge so much as illuminate each other and the characters. A character-driven, literary but accessible novel that stirs many emotions but none so beautifully as grief and hope.

[gypsysmom_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

This book which is about the HIV/AIDS crisis brought back so many memories of good friends who died much too soon. One of the first that I personally knew was a young man who had just finished up his MBA and started a new job when he was diagnosed with AIDS. He died within a year from the diagnosis. That was in 1987, thirty-five years ago. Who knows what he would have achieved? I remember being incensed at a meeting of a charitable group where we were discussing areas to focus on in the coming years and when the HIV/AIDS crisis was mentioned one man said "It's just a few gay men; it's not worth focusing on that." Of course, now we know that men and women, straight and LGBTQ+, black, white, Asian, indigenous and people of all shades of colour were affected by this virus (and still are) but even if it was just gay men why would we let that happen if it could be prevented? This book has two time lines: Chicago in the late 1980s and Paris in 2015. The Chicago time line focuses on a group of friends living in Boys Town, the gay ghetto. Yale Tishman is employed by a small gallery to drum up financial support. His lover is Charlie who runs a small publication for the LGBT crowd. The book opens just after a talented gay man named Nico has died of AIDS and his friends gather to remember him because they aren't welcome at his official funeral. Nico's younger sister, Fiona, comes to this gathering as she has become friends with them while she helped care for Nico in his last days. Fiona passes on Yale's name to an elderly relative who lived in Paris before and after WWI and acquired drawings and paintings from some of the artists, such as Modigliani, who have since become famous. She wants to pass these works on to the gallery but with the requirement that they be exhibited as a whole and not broken up. Yale journeys to her home in remote Wisconsin a numbr of times and is successful in acquiring the art for the gallery. Shortly after the woman's son creates a fuss because the collection is worth quite a bit of money, the only worth of it to him. Yale is let go and for some time is adrift because he has also broken up with Charlie when he discovered he had been unfaithful. In the 2015 time line Fiona, now a mother, is in Paris to find her daughter who has disappeared from her life for some years. A short video sent to her by a friend shows her daughter painting on a bridge in Paris and on that slim evidence Fiona leaves Chicago for Paris. In Paris she stays with a man who was also part of the Chicago group from the 1980s who has gone on to become a famous photographer. He has an opening soon which will display some photographs and videos from that time period. Fiona looks forward to seeing those images but at the same time dreads it because that was a harrowing time for her. Also, her search for her daughter is paramount. Through Fiona we experience the grief and guilt that all survivors of a traumatic time feel. This was a great book to listen to. The narrator, Michael Crouch, did a superb job in conveying the emotions in both sections. Highly recommended.

[brandyluther-1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

One of the best books I've read. The characters have depth and strength. And life isn't always what you thought it would be. There are ups and downs.

[castlelass · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

Dual timeline narrative that tells a story of Chicago’s gay community in the mid-1980s and early-1990s and shows what has happened in the lives of several characters thirty years later. As the story opens, in 1985, Yale is attending a post-funeral gathering for his friend, Nico, who has died of AIDS. He works as an art museum executive at Northwestern. In a major subplot, he is approached by an eighty-something woman with a collection of art she wants to donate to the museum. In the 2015 timeline, Nico’s sister, Fiona, is in Paris to search for a family member. She is staying with a friend, Richard, who has ties to her brother and is a famous photographer. While she is there, she plans to attend Richard’s AIDS-related photo exhibition.

This book is a character study that takes a compassionate look at the ravages of the AIDS epidemic. It effectively portrays the randomness of the disease and survivor’s guilt for those that make it through. Makkai’s writing is eloquent and her characters are believable. I felt particularly fond of Yale. I became immersed in the storylines. I preferred the 1985 narrative over 2015 but I think the latter was needed to keep the book from becoming too depressing. The dual timelines are knit together elegantly. I knew this book would be sad, and it was, but I am glad I read it.

4.5

[janismack · Calificación: 3 de 5 estrellas]

I started this book and stopped after 50 pages. I did not find the characters sympathetic and I couldn’t get into the story.

[cariola_6 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

The Great Believers tells two interrelated stories told in alternate chapters, one set in Chicago in the mid-1980s, the other in Paris in 2015. The first centers around Yale Tishman, development director for a new gallery set to open at Northwestern university. As a gay man, Yale has seen the devastating effects of the AIDS epidemic on his group of friends; in fact, the novel opens at a memorial party for his friend Nico. He is in a relationship with Charlie, a jealous partner who seems to almost be looking for Yale to be unfaithful. Makkai draws us into Yale's personal and professional worlds as he watches so many young men fade away, and as he attempts to secure an endowment of paintings that will give the new museum the boost it needs to attract more donors.Fiona, Nico's sister, is the character that bridges the two stories. She supported her brother when he came out and was there for him and many of his friends as they succumbed to AIDS. In between the stories, Fiona has tried to get her life back together, attending college, marrying, having a daughter, divorcing, and starting a retail business. But the main regret of her life is that she became estranged from her daughter, Claire, who left home to join a cult. After abandoning the cult, Claire has disappeared, and Fiona is in Paris trying to find her.If this sounds like two very disjointed stories, that's only because I don't want to give away too much. Trust me, there are many, many connections between the two--characters who appear in both; memories that resurface; resentments, fears, loves, and hopes that underlie Yale's and Fiona's stories. What could have been a painful novel about loss becomes one instead of resiliency and the persistence of love. Highly recommended.

[wagner5sarah35 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

This novel started slow, but the different strands of the story started to come together about midway through. Set amidst the 1980s, with AIDS ravaging the gay community, this novel includes a lot of death, strained family relations, and complicated love. And perhaps because of reading this novel during another pandemic, I particularly noticed how outsiders treated members of the heavily affected gay community and the myths at war with the known science of the virus (and, of course, the HIV virus is even better understood now than it was in the 1980s). This is a good read, but with the themes of death and family tension, it's not easy or light.

[yvonnekins · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

This is a strange situation for me because, frankly, I was considering giving this a five-star rating, because it did emotionally impact me greatly while I was reading, but I just have too many criticisms of it to give it the full five.Five-star ratings are reserved for books where the criticisms I have didn't affect my enjoyment, and with this book, they did affect my enjoyment and my immersion in the story.First of all, this book couldn't stop giving itself away. I knew every important beat of this book way before we got to it because the hints were just so obvious and it made the twists not really... twists at all. Some of these were given away in Yale's perspective, but many were given away in Fiona's.Second, I don't think Fiona's perspective was necessary at all. I didn't give a single flying fuck about Claire, to be honest, and I don't think it added anything to the story. In fact, all it served to do was distract me from the main story taking place in Yale's POV up until the final chapter. I did love the way the book closed in Fiona's point of view, but up until that I didn't care for her timeline at all and I just kept getting frustrated whenever a 1986 chapter ended and suddenly we're in 2015 with Fiona looking for her daughter who I haven't got a single reason to care about. I cared more about Nico than Claire, and Nico dies before the book even starts. Most of Fiona's chapters could have been taken out of the book and it'd be the same story, maybe even a better story.Still, I loved this. It's not a 5-star book, but it did make me tear up at multiple points. Some of the things would have impacted me more had I not guessed them ahead of time, but I was still emotionally affected. I really enjoyed Makkai's writing style; it was immersive without being overwritten. I so enjoyed Yale as a character and I loved that it was his eyes through which this story played out. He was perfectly imperfect.The main plot, a group of friends living through the AIDS crisis in 1980s Boystown, was somewhat predictable, yet despite its predictability, I won't stop thinking about it how it all played out for a while. I won't stop thinking about Yale's story for a long time. Even now I'm considering giving it 5-stars just for that. This book is 100% worth the read despite its flaws, and I highly recommend it.

[nancyjcbs · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

The Great Believers is a beautifully written novel that deeply humanizes the two main characters. Their loving nature as well as their flaws are evident.The novel is told in two times and places but Fiona is a major player in both. Fiona’s brother is part of a close circle of friends in Chicago. It is 1986, AIDS is devastating cities and these men are gay. The second major character is Yale. He’s a close friend of both Fiona and her brother Nico. Yale’s story is the driving force of this storyline.In 2015 Fiona is estranged from her missing daughter. An investigation leads Fiona to Paris in search of her. She stays with another of Nico’s friends who is a famous photographer.The inclusion of characters in both eras as well as memories of the earlier time never feel staged or forced. I believe this novel will stay with me for a while.

[dianekeenoy · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

This was a very moving story moving between Chicago in the mid '80s during the Aids crisis and Paris in 2015 where Fiona is looking for her missing daughter, Clare. Fiona's brother Nico has died as the novel opens. We are introduced to a close group of friends as they struggle with his death. Then, from there, the Aids crisis that will eventually touch every single one of them. It's hard to put into words just how meaningful this book is, we're so far removed now from how Aids decimated an entire group of people in those dark days. Thank goodness.

[smits_52 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

What a rich, tender, heartwarming, engrossing story. It tells the story of the early 1980's AIDS crisis through the eyes of gay men living in Chicago. The characters are deeply human . I loved them all. Into the story is woven Fiona who is part of the present around 2015 and when story begins in the 1980s. Also her aunt who wants to leave some art to a small gallery and that story gives us Yale's story.I really liked this novel.

[brenzi_3 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I lost my brother to complications from the AIDS virus in 1993. He was 38 years old and eight years younger than me. It was a harrowing time for my family and one I wouldn’t want to relive so when I heard about this book and its concentration on the AIDS crisis in Chicago in the late 80s I didn’t really think I’d ever read it. It was just too close to home, too much of a return to a traumatic time and just too too hard. But for some reason I kept coming back to it, again and again and when I noticed it on several end of the year Best Books of 2018 lists I thought, why not? Maybe I’ll learn something or maybe it will help to settle something for me. What I found was a book brimming with both sadness, which I expected, and hope, which surprised me. The young gay men in the story were all ambitious, smart, loving human beings dealing with the horrific loss of their friends and the probability of their own death with admirable courage and grace. The way in which the author depicted these characters makes me wonder if she had some personal connection to someone with AIDS because they were all so well-drawn.There are two timeframes: 1986-92 and 2015 when Fiona, the sister of the first victim we encounter in the narrative, Nico, goes to Paris in search of her estranged daughter and stays with one of the survivors of the crisis that she knew in Chicago. In doing so she is forced to come to terms with her past and effect the crisis had on her and her ability to establish a good relationship with her daughter, who was born as one of the main characters lays dying in the AIDS ward of the hospital where Fiona’s baby is being born. As she looks back on her life the realization of the power the AIDS crisis had on her becomes apparent.Powerful, important and compassionate I think this is a book everyone should read.

[beth.clarke · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

There are times when you finish a book, but the characters stay with you. Makkai's writing made me feel the pain of each character. Amazing novel! Makes me wish I could go to Chicago in the 80s and hang out with Yale and Fiona.

[narshkite · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

I have been meaning to read this book for a year, and every time I had the emotional bandwidth and reading time (its almost 500 pages) I shied away. I am of the age covered in the Great Believers, I lost friends to AIDs, many friends, two of whom were quite dear to me. I attended the funeral of a 22 year old who had looked 122 when he finally died while I lived in a country with a president who would not even say the word AIDS. Reagan gets lionized now, but that is not an exaggeration. He took the position that something that was only killing Gay men and Africans was not of national concern. That is not hyperbole. It is good for me to be reminded that I lived through that kind of institutionalized meanness before (though the current meanness is next level), and it is also good for me to be reminded that many people did not live through it. Its good for me to remember what is is like to shake cyclosporin powder on bedsores so deep you could see bone, on a 75 pound 6 foot tall 22-year old who three months earlier had been so beautiful it hurt to look at him. It is good for me to remember that the Gay community had to find solutions the government didn't care about, and that when they started to find answers, they widened the net to see that proper care and medication was available to people outside the community, that it wasn't us and them from inside the AIDs activist community, just from the government and the purportedly straight folks. All those things are good for me to remember, but the rememberancr certainly does not feel good. And that is what kept me from reading before. But I finally got over it, and OMG, this book is wonderful! Sad, and affirming, and gorgeous and pretty perfect. (I listened to the audio for this, and the reader is excellent.)I won't say much about the plot, but will mention that there are two timelines here. The first is in the AIDs killing fields of the 80's. The story revolves around a group of friends, gay men, who are decimated by the disease, and the woman around whom they swirled. The second is 2015 when that same woman is dealing with life in the aftermath of the pain and fear of losing her people. I often hate dual timelines, but this absolutely worked. The reader gets to see the pain doesn't end when the lives flame out.Makkai's characters are rich and complex. I loved Yale and Fiona so much, and wanted good things for them. I was mostly not rewarded with good things, but there was such truth to their journeys I knew there was no other way for them to play out. In the end this is a book not about death, but about love and grief, and about how completely worth it it is to invest in people, to trust, even when it ends in scorching pain. So far its my fiction read of the year I think. I find I am reading a lot of really great books about grief these days, but mostly they are memoirs. They are wonderful too, but this book made me remember that there are things a writer can do in fiction that sometimes get us to more universal truths than non-fiction can manage. I don't know what to say, except, read it!

[janepat-619237 · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

This well-reviewed and received novel jumped around in time and place [Chicago 1980s and contemporary Paris] and had a premise that was hard for me to accept about the value of an art collection. The AIDS crisis of the 1980s is a sub-theme, so beware if you like it fluffy. Sometimes I found it hard to follow and had to read slower.

[christopherswann · Calificación: 4 de 5 estrellas]

4.5 stars. This one drew me in slowly, and I spent the last two nights staying up far too late so I could finish it.

[ablachly_1 · Calificación: 5 de 5 estrellas]

If you want to feel gutted by excellent literature, this is the book for you.