A review by karaklos
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
1.0
I am so glad to be done with this book. I disliked it very much.
The Great Believers alternates between two different time periods and places: 1980’s Chicago and 2015 Paris. The 1980’s portion follows a young gay man named Yale and his group of friends and his work. This portion has two interesting components: the AIDS crisis in Chicago and a significant art acquisition Yale is leading. The 2015 portion follows Fiona who is trying to track down her estranged adult daughter. This portion seems like it will be interesting but quite frankly isn’t.
While there is good material to make this a great read, the author doesn’t focus on it. The book spends so much time on minute details instead of the meat of the story. There was one paragraph where Yale was testing all the pens in his desk drawer to see which ones still worked. The pens were actually described...this one had northwestern on it and this one was dead. Please author, can I have one of those pens to stick in my eye? I’m sorry, who cares!
There is such an opportunity to discuss what these men went through. Instead of just stating that they’re mad at Reagan, why were they mad? What was or wasn’t happening? Tell me more about the fight instead of who was lusting after who.
The character development in this book is really poor. I kept asking myself who is Asher again? Which one is Teddy? They are supposedly a family but you never really know any of them. I didn’t like a single character.
Yale had an intern and he was thinking about being his sexual mentor and I was thinking if this were a male boss & female intern, it would not be acceptable at all. There was a sexual encounter where bodily fluids came out and landed on a table and they wiped it off with a towel. Really? Do we need this level of detail?!
A really boring, terrible read.
The Great Believers alternates between two different time periods and places: 1980’s Chicago and 2015 Paris. The 1980’s portion follows a young gay man named Yale and his group of friends and his work. This portion has two interesting components: the AIDS crisis in Chicago and a significant art acquisition Yale is leading. The 2015 portion follows Fiona who is trying to track down her estranged adult daughter. This portion seems like it will be interesting but quite frankly isn’t.
While there is good material to make this a great read, the author doesn’t focus on it. The book spends so much time on minute details instead of the meat of the story. There was one paragraph where Yale was testing all the pens in his desk drawer to see which ones still worked. The pens were actually described...this one had northwestern on it and this one was dead. Please author, can I have one of those pens to stick in my eye? I’m sorry, who cares!
There is such an opportunity to discuss what these men went through. Instead of just stating that they’re mad at Reagan, why were they mad? What was or wasn’t happening? Tell me more about the fight instead of who was lusting after who.
The character development in this book is really poor. I kept asking myself who is Asher again? Which one is Teddy? They are supposedly a family but you never really know any of them. I didn’t like a single character.
Yale had an intern and he was thinking about being his sexual mentor and I was thinking if this were a male boss & female intern, it would not be acceptable at all. There was a sexual encounter where bodily fluids came out and landed on a table and they wiped it off with a towel. Really? Do we need this level of detail?!
A really boring, terrible read.