Alistair's Reviews > The Great Believers

Makkai has set her best novel yet in two time periods: Chicago in the mid 1980s and Paris in 2015. The character that spans the two is Fiona; it is Fiona’s older brother, Nico, who has died from an AIDS related illness in 1985. After this, her life revolves around Nico’s friends, of whom Yale is one. Her love and care for these men can’t be disputed, however at what cost to her own life? Late in the novel, Fiona reflects that she’d “been living for the past thirty years in a deafening echo. She’d been tending the graveyard alone, oblivious to the fact that the world had moved on...”
And it is in Paris that The Reader becomes fully aware of Fiona’s sacrifice (obsession?), attempting to connect with her adult daughter, a clumsy attempt that is almost painful to read with Fiona’s naïveté and hurt so visceral.
Meanwhile back in the 80s, Yale’s life is crumbling around him, personally and professionally and where the betrayals threaten to overwhelm him.
Ambitious in scope and achievement, and having read two of her previous novels, this is a revelatory success for Rebecca Makkai.