A dual-timeline novel moving between Chicago's art world during the devastating first years of the 1980s AIDS crisis and a mother's 2015 search through Paris for her estranged daughter, tracing how loss echoes across a generation.
Books mentioned in The Great Believers (7)
My Generation by F. Scott Fitzgerald: ““We were the great believers. I have never cared for any men as much as for these who felt the first springs when I did, and saw death ahead, and were reprieved—and who now walk the long stormy summer.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald, “My Generation” (epigraph)”
Slash Fiction by Rebecca Hazelton: ““the world is a wonder, but the portions are small” —Rebecca Hazelton, “Slash Fiction” (epigraph)”
Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee: “The most ridiculous of Yale's first loves was Clarence Darrow, as portrayed in Inherit the Wind, which he'd read in tenth grade.”
Pet Sematary by Stephen King: “Yale found a pen and wrote his office number and the Sharps' number inside the back copy of Pet Sematary, the one book in Julian's backpack.”
The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe: “It's like that Poe story, the Red Death one. There's death out there, but we're gonna have a fabulous time in here.”
Hamlet by William Shakespeare: “Yale and Charlie had long held tickets to see Julian in Hamlet at Victory Gardens... "It's Hamlet," Yale said. "It's supposed to be unnerving." (also quoted on-page: "In this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, to tell my story.")”
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman: “on the kitchen counter, in a shopping bag, were other things: a half-empty vodka bottle, Nico's blue Top-Siders, a blank postcard from Vancouver, pewter cuff links in a velvety box, Leaves of Grass.”