The Great Believers

Why The Great Believers Actually Works

I picked up Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers not because I was looking for it so much as because a librarian kept shoving it toward me. I expected another AIDS-era melodrama that would make me cry and then be done with it. It did neither. It stayed with me in a way I didn't anticipate, and I want to explain why without getting sentimental about it. Makkai uses dual timelines — the late 1980s and early 1990s in Chicago, and the mid-2010s — and she bounces between them without any apology. Most writers would find that exhausting, but she treats each period with roughly equal weight and lets the emotional payoff come from the connection between them. The 1980s plot follows a tight-knit group of friends during the height of the AIDS crisis. The 2010s plot follows Fiona, one of those survivors, as she goes back to try and recover a lost art exhibition and re-examine what actually happened to her community. I spent some time writing off the dual-timeline approach as a gimmick. I was wrong. The gimmick only shows up if you're looking for a gimmick. What's actually happening is a careful argument about memory, grief, and how communities try to preserve themselves when the people holding the memory keep dying. The 2014 timeline isn't just a framing device. It's the book's thesis statement wearing a sweater that doesn't scream anything.

Here is the thing nobody tells you about this book: the second half hits harder than the first. I found myself skimming the early chapters because the pacing felt slow and the emotional register seemed flat. That was a mistake on my part. The early chapters are doing architectural work. Once the structure locks in, the whole thing starts carrying more weight with every page. I wish I'd trusted that more.

Who this book is actually for

If you've already read Andrew Sean Greer's Less or any of the newer AIDS-era fiction, this won't feel new. The emotional vocabulary is similar. But Makkai writes differently from most authors in that space. She's interested in art as a form of survival, not just as an aesthetic backdrop. The central art project — the staged recreation of Niki de Saint Phalle's Tarot Garden as a memorial piece — is the kind of detail that could be purely decorative in someone else's hands. Here it does actual labor. It connects past and present. It holds the group together. It also falls apart when you need it to, and that breakdown is where the book becomes real. I should say: this is not an easy read in the way that books about AIDS usually are. It's not harrowing for its own sake, which is actually worse in a way. The grief is patient. It waits. It accumulates. If you're reading this during a particularly rough time, probably don't start with it. There are better books for that purpose.

What Actually Happens

The short version is this: a group of queer friends in Chicago's bohemian scene navigate the AIDS epidemic. Their friend Eric dies. Their community shrinks. The remaining survivors carry guilt, love, and unfinished business forward. Thirty years later, Fiona tries to put an exhibition together that recreates a piece of art Eric helped create. Something goes wrong. People confront what they remember versus what actually happened. The longer version is that Makkai treats each character as a real person who makes bad decisions, avoids confrontation, and sometimes betrays the people who need them most. That's the part that makes this book worth reading. Nobody here is a symbol. They're just people trying to stay alive and stay connected in circumstances that make both things nearly impossible.

The characters hold the book together

Fiona is the anchor, but the other characters are the real engine. There's a specific dynamic between her and a man named Barry that I thought was going nowhere for most of the book and then became one of the most important relationships on the page. Makkai doesn't tell you this will happen. She just puts the pieces there and lets you assemble them. I found myself resenting the slow burn for a while, then I realized the slowness was the point. The relationships had to feel earned because the losses they experience are earned too. The book is probably best understood as a group portrait. No single character carries it. Each one holds a piece of the truth about what happened, and none of them hold the whole thing. That's a deliberate choice. It means you're never allowed to settle into one perspective and feel like you understand. You don't. Nobody does.

Where to Find It

It's available everywhere books are available now. Hardcover and paperback through most major retailers. Audiobook exists and is worth considering if you want someone else doing the narration. The audiobook version is solid but not remarkable — it doesn't add anything special that reading wouldn't. Just a practical choice for people who want to consume it while doing something else. The PDF situation is the usual murky area. There are legal download options through subscription services like Kindle or Audible. I don't recommend piracy for something this substantial. The book has enough to offer that wasting it on a stolen copy feels like a cheap move, even if that's not your usual approach.

A few things I wish I'd known before starting

First: the book is long. Around 460 pages in the hardcover. It doesn't feel long in the way that some 400-plus literary novels do. The structure keeps it moving. But if you're trying to finish something quickly, this isn't the path. Second: the artistic references will go over your head if you don't have some familiarity with conceptual art and performance art. You don't need a degree here. A basic awareness of what artists like Niki de Saint Phalle did is enough. Makkai explains what she needs to explain. She doesn't assume you already know everything. Third: the emotional impact builds slowly. I read this in about four days and the feelings from it came back to me on day seven, which is the most annoying way a book can work. It wasn't designed to hit immediately. It was designed to linger. That's the whole point, honestly.

I'll add one more practical note. The dual timeline means you might occasionally lose track of which year you're in during dense passages. This isn't a flaw in the book. It's just something to be aware of. I kept a mental note on a spare piece of paper the first time through. Not necessary after that, but helpful initially. The timelines converge in a way that feels inevitable once you're committed to the story, but getting there requires patience. Most people who abandon this book do it in the first hundred pages. Those people usually come back to it later. The book asks something of you, and that something is time and attention. It's worth giving it that. Not because it's important in some grand cultural sense — though it is — but because it's genuinely well written and the emotional core is honest. Makkai isn't performing grief here. She's documenting it. There's a difference, and it shows.