THE GREAT BELIEVERS

This novel, which alternates between the 1980s gay community in Chicago and 2015 Paris where a mother searches for her estranged adult daughter, is admirable and enlightening. The earlier chronology centers on Yale, a young gay man whose relationships with friends and lovers are being swallowed up by the AIDS epidemic. Decades later, Yale’s dear friend Fiona is desperate to find her daughter who fell prey to a cult and disappeared in the streets of Paris - possibly with Fiona’s grandchild.

I’m very glad to have read this incredibly moving book. Yale’s storyline is beautifully written with sensitivity, charm, depth and sorrow. However, I wanted to love this story and its characters, and a few things held me back. I wanted to feel more depth and support in Yale’s friendships as they faced impending tragedy. And most importantly, I felt the multiple storylines-within-storylines throughout Fiona’s chronology were too cluttered. From my perspective, they diluted the importance of this largely untold story of an epidemic that went unaddressed for far too long.

A book about terrible, deadly illness and its aftermath is not expected to have lots of food. Sometimes when there isn’t food in a story, I look to the cover for inspiration -The Great Believers has gorgeous cover art, with bright orange hues and interesting geometric angles that reminded me of citrus. Slices of orange, to symbolize health, hope and well being, seemed the perfect accompaniment.