SO M E T H I N G TO
BELIEVE IN B Y S O L A N G E J A Z AY E R I
Set against the backdrop of a flamboyant Chicago in the mid-1980s and the art scene of present-day Paris, The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai is a beautifully written tapestry of love, friendship, and loss. This sprawling, profoundly moving novel is all at once raw, real, and heartrending, yet scene after intimate scene toggles between tears and bouts of belly laughs. It’s no wonder it was named a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and winner of many other prestigious honors.
he novel is both entertaining and thought-provoking, with ideas such as these: “And was friendship that different, in the end, from love? You took the possibility of sex out of it, and it was all about the moment anyway. Being here, right now, in someone’s life. Making room for someone in yours.” The Great Believers opens with a celebration of life in honor of Nico Marcus, a charismatic man taken too soon by AIDS. He was loved and revered by many, and his memorial brings together a close-knit group of friends. From the outset, Makkai’s characters are wide ranging and distinct. Chief among them are Nico’s younger sister, Fiona, and Nico’s friend Yale Tishman, whom we follow as the two protagonists in the interweaving chapters of the story.
140 | JA NUA R Y 2020
