My Book of the Year: WSIR #5

If there can only be one, it's ...

The Great Believers

Um, so my book of 2020 is actually a book from 2018. Awkward! But also I sort of love that, because sometimes it takes us a while to get to a book, and there are so many past year gems to find. And in my case, this book showed up right on time.

Power summary: The interwoven tales of a group of young people, mostly gay, in 1980’s Chicago amidst the AIDS epidemic, and a middle-aged woman in Paris, 2015, trying to find her estranged daughter.

On its own as a novel, as characters, as writing, The Great Believers is outstanding. But against the backdrop of COVID? Whew, it takes on an almost unbearable poignancy.

Lemme just drop this scene right here, where one character, Yale, suggests closing the local bathhouse because it’s a high-risk environment. Another character, Julian, objects, saying:

“But Yale. After they cure this thing, there won’t be any place left to go.” Yale felt a hundred years older than Julian right then—Julian, who was, in fact, examining the pores of his forehead in the mirror—but instead of saying what he thought, which was that there was never going to be any cure, he said, “When they cure it, we’ll open new ones. And they’ll be even better, right?”

Julian turned and gave him a sad, beautiful smile. “Can you imagine the party? When they cure it?”

I MEAN CAN YOU EVEN HANDLE THIS? BECAUSE TRULY I CANNOT.

In the same way that some not-me people love dystopian fiction as a cautionary take on present times, this book was maddening deja-vu of what we’re all living through now, as each character handled the fear and risk in a different way. Some frantically soaked up the “good times” and believed they would never get it. Some thought it was government control. Some holed up and hoped they could escape it by avoiding life. Some tried to follow every rule and still got the virus. And in the end, it was simply a group of young people confronting death and illness and poverty and vulnerability, in the face of public stigma and government inaction.

Beyond the COVID parallel, though, it was also a perfect portrait of that beautiful, shimmering early adult time where your friends are your family and your potential and choices are limitless which, of course, we almost never appreciate until it’s gone and the doors start closing. (A friend likened this to A Little Life and that’s very apt.)

And equally, the intertwining stories tackle the bittersweetness that’s left behind after illness, after trauma, after death. How trauma can render us brilliant in crises but hollow to the present joys and tenderness of life.

it’s basically this ^^^

Also, Paris and Chicago are such vivid characters. I lived in this Chicago neighborhood right after college, though a decade after the book, and this novel transported me right back. I could almost taste the purple slushees from Sidetracks that flowed much, much too freely during Pride.

Ugh. I loved this book so much. I can’t think of anything better to read right now, to help us think through what a post-COVID world will look like, and how to manage it with some grace and tenderness for ourselves, for each other, for the people who didn’t handle the pandemic like we might have, and for the people we lost.

It is not, I confess, happy and fuzzy - it is foreboding and melancholy and I wept through a lot of it. But it’s also darkly funny, and I felt my heart swell two sizes with love for these characters, and I wanted to fling it against the wall because it made me so angry, primarily because it was over. That’s Great Fiction, you know? It should have won ALL the awards in 2018 as far as I’m concerned, and it wins mine this year.

I’d lend you my copy but I already gave it to someone. So buy it here from the best indie Chicago bookstore —-> The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai.

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What was the best book YOU read this year? Let me know in the comments.