[Discussion 5/5] LGBTQ2+ | The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai | Chapters 35-47

[u/miriel41]

Hello readers, welcome to the last discussion of The Great Believers!

Links:

• Schedule
• Marginalia

Summary:

2015

• Cecily and Kurt meet with Fiona. They are worried about Claire, because none of them have heard from her.
• Fiona gets Claire's address from Kurt.
• When Claire opens the door to Fiona, she says that this is not okay.

1986

• Dr. Cheng treats Yale, but keeps anything related to AIDS off Yale's record.
• Yale sends a note to Bill to get tested for HTLV-III, now known as HIV. He later hears that Bill's wife Dolly has left Bill.
• Yale visits Katsu Takami at the County hospital.
• Yale gets a letter from Charlie. Charlie asks if he was directly responsible for Yale getting infected.

2015

• Richard has a surprise for Fiona. Julian Ames is still alive and comes to see them.

1988, 1989

• Charlie's paper is doing well, but apparently Charlie spends all the money on coke.
• Charlie continues to write letters to Yale.
• Asher tells Yale that Charlie wants to see him and Yale thinks about all the things he could tell Charlie, like Fiona's college acceptance, that Nora's show is delayed and that Nora passed away, that Roscoe had gone to live with Cecily.
• Yale goes to see Charlie one and a half years later. Charlie has gone blind. Yale almost doesn't recognise him. Charlie is sedated and Yale doesn't talk to him, only feeds him water.

2015

• Julian tells Fiona, Cecily, Richard and Serge what has been going on in his life.

1990

• Yale and Fiona take part in a protest.
• Fiona tells Yale she is in love with her professor. She can also see that Yale is in love with Asher. Asher is the reason Yale is at the march.
• When a reporter stops in front of Yale and asks him what he feels, Yale kisses Asher.
• They all lie down in protest and are taken away by the police one by one. When it's Yale's turn he doesn't manage to be stiff and lands on the ground. The police claims he resisted and Yale is constrained. He feels his rib break.

2015

• Fiona talks with her therapist online.
• A few days later, she gets a phone call from Claire. Claire tells her that there's gunfire near her, but that she is save.
• Fiona meets Jake again and they have sex.
• Fiona gets a message from Claire, who proposes that Fiona and Cecily could watch Nicolette for a while.

1990

• Charlie is gone and Teresa shows Yale stuff in his and Charlie's old apartment that Yale might want.
• Asher comes to get Yale. He tells him that he's moving to New York. His activism will have a bigger impact from there.

2015

• Fiona and Cecily meet Claire and Nicolette. The two grandmothers watch Nicolette play on the playground.
• Fiona starts to cry. She admits that she sent away Yale' mom, when she came to visit him in the hospital.
• Yale died shortly after Fiona gave birth to Claire and she couldn't be with him.

1991

• Fiona and Cecily take Yale to the gallery to the opening of the exhibition with Nora's pictures. Ranko Novak is also featured.

2015

• It's the day of Richard's exhibition. Fiona, Cecily, Julian and even Claire all attend.
• Fiona and Claire have an argument about their relationship in front of Julian. Julian says that they can be grateful, as people who love each other, to be alive at the same time.

1992

• Fiona visits Yale and he looks a bit better.
• Rafael had been Yale's roommate for a while.
• Teresa regularly sends cards to Yale.
• Yale can't think of anyone he wants to see, when Fiona asks.
• Fiona starts getting contractions and the nurse Debbie calls Labor and Delivery.
• Yale starts feeling worse and Dr. Cheng says that they're officially starting hospice.
• Kurt brings Roscoe to the hospital.
• Yale starts dreaming and he mostly sees Fiona.

2015

• They are all at Richard's exhibition. Jake is also there.
• There is a video of Yale, Charlie and Nico.

[u/_pineapple1865]

I'd give this 3.5☆ - I enjoyed it & was glad I picked it up, but I'm not raving abt it to everyone.

I think the book started out strong with some banging jokes & a few good descriptive lines. But as time went on in the 1980's, things got more bleak & a lot of shitty things just kept happening one after the other - Yale's professional and personal life imploded & he doesn't survive too long after that either. I felt that this section was me knowing that Yale is not going to make it, and just waiting for the other shoe to drop. The contrast between Nico's funeral being a celebration of his life by his closest friends & Yale dying alone was pretty depressing also.

I liked the 2015 sections as a reprieve for what was happening in the 1980's (I'm not sure I'd have been able to read the 1980's sections back to back) but I was more invested in the Nora plotline than in the Fiona/Claire plotline. I feel like there was more context missing to the disconnect between Fiona and Claire than simply 'because you were born, I couldn't be there for my friend when he died & that was the worst day of my life'. I was glad that Ranko's work was displayed in the end.