I recently had the opportunity to chat on the phone with Makkai about her new novel, the AIDS crisis, and art. It’s a stunning tale that is harrowing yet funny, devastating yet hopeful. Makkai weaves 1980s Chicago with contemporary Paris in a tender, compelling novel about loss, friendship, tragedy, and redemption. Rebecca Makkai’s new novel The Great Believersrevisits this time period and the devastation of the AIDS crisis. In these moments the AIDS epidemic felt personal to me, but years passed, and people stopped talking about it.
“He died,” I managed to say before completely falling apart.
(And they didn’t even know that I touched my neighbor every chance I got, to prove to him, and myself, that I wasn’t scared, that I loved him.)Ī year later, a classmate apologized and asked how my neighbor was doing. I tried to explain to my peers how AIDS was contracted, but they didn’t care: because my neighbor was diagnosed, they were convinced I harbored the disease.
I was in seventh grade when the entire class pushed their desks to the other side of the room, screaming they needed to get away from me before I gave everyone AIDS.
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