Download The Great Believers [PDF] By Rebecca Makkai

The Great Believers book pdf download for free or read online, also The Great Believers pdf was written by Rebecca Makkai.

The Great Believers Book PDF download for free

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the director of development for a Chicago art gallery, is about to pull off an incredible coup by gifting the gallery with an extraordinary collection of paintings from the 1920s. But as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around them.

One by one his friends die and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus draws ever closer to Yale and soon all he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister.

Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris searching for her estranged daughter, who has disappeared into a cult. As she stays with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finally comes to terms with the devastating effects of AIDS on her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwined stories take us through the angst of the 1980s and the chaos of the modern world as Yale and Fiona struggle to find good in the midst of disaster.

The Great Believers Book Pdf Download

Rebecca Maccai’s story of the lives of a group of gay men and friends in Chicago at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic is a moving and masterful re-enactment. It beautifully reflects an era, with all its terror and anger; his hope and despair and yes, even his humor.

I know because I was there, actually in New York, but the experience as the disease was a pandemic. It is also the story of survivors and their guilt, their suffering, and what can only be described as PTSD. One of the great gifts of the Maccai story is her recognition that AIDS was a war and that gay communities were battlefields for health care, political rights, and most importantly, human dignity. .

The Great Believers is the story of the Yale, Charlie, Justin, Teddy Richard, and Fiona. It’s also the story of Nico, who is already dead when the story begins, but acts as a sort of catalyst ghost that haunts the dual-screen story from the ’80s and early ’90s to the present day.

As someone who lived through that time, I was struck by how vividly and accurately the author portrayed the time and those who were desperately trying to survive. In the first few chapters, I resisted fully immersing myself in the drama. I even told myself (quite hilariously) that this was cultural appropriation! Who was this writer to appropriate these lives, these stories?

This writer is an artist. And this book is what makes art. Try to shed some light or open a window to an experience others have never had but need to know about. In his ugliness and despair there is a beauty that deserves to be celebrated. Maccai was spectacularly successful. Here is a microcosm of a community of vain, petty, generous, loving, bitter, fearful, brave people. Here are the fortune tellers and the hypocrites, the tomboy and the fairy, the loud and the cowering, the drag and the leather queens and everyone else in between.

It’s also a celebration of those who had no ax to grind: straight or lesbian friends, doctors, nurses, and supporters of AIDS victims whose sole motivation was compassion and human decency. They were perhaps the most remarkable of all, the ones who realized that all lives are precious. They are as memorable as the victims. I know because I have met dozens of them. You can also read The Great Believers.

This book brought up a lot of feelings in me because, unlike the characters in this story, I wasn’t in touch with my great friends from high school and college and I accidentally found out a few months ago that one of my close friends was from there. the day after he died of AIDS-related complications less than a month before the age of 34. So it was a difficult read for me, but I stuck with it because I could see from the beginning that there was a message and a lesson to be learned from this story.

The author really did a fantastic job with character development. It really allows you to get to know each and every one of the group and feel like they have been your friends all these years too. Although it jumps back and forth from the mid-1980s to 2015, it’s easy to follow the story without getting lost.

I think the subplot that goes along with the artwork cemented it all and gave it the “hope” and silver lining to ease the despair that was the backbone of the main characters’ lives as they watched their friends die one by one. one. In fact, writing a book on this subject without feeling like they had just finished a modern day Jude the Obscure was an incredible achievement.

It is interesting to note that after reading this book, the health situation in the United States in 2021, which we all hope is coming to the end of another pandemic that has claimed the lives of millions of people around the world, during the epidemic of AIDS. is remarkably similar. Probably because many of the same legislators are still in office. This book is fantastic. Everyone should read it!

Also Read – Dark Song [PDF] By Christine Feehan

Must Check – Abide With Me [PDF] By Elizabeth Strout