In dual timelines, thirty years later, Fiona is tracking down her estranged daughter amidst terror attacks in Paris. One friend who remains is Nico’s sister, Fiona. I don’t know how you can compare it to anything else…I don’t know how it’s like anything other than war! The Lost Generation too suffered from the flu epidemic and grieving alone.

The song has always moved me personally, and it exquisitely captured the pain and grief of the characters.Īnd the War depicted by The Lost Generation becomes a metaphor for Yale’s current life, where he must cope with the fact he may not be “safe” after all. In one emotional memorial scene, a baritone sings “ Pie Jesu” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new requiem. Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic is growing and, although Yale feels safe, more of his friends begin to die, one by one, after his friend Nico’s funeral. In 1985 Chicago, Yale, a gay man, lives with his partner and works at an art gallery in Chicago, where he is attempting to obtain a collection of 1920s paintings from an elderly woman named Nora, whose heart was broken in World War I. The Great Believers is a story of the meaning of friendship in dire historical circumstances. 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.

Winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award.

Winner of the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association Award.

Winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.A pick for the New York Library’s 2018 best books.Shortlisted for the National Book Award.

The great believers novel