If you are looking to read and talk about history, this is the book group for you!
Each season we will read non-fiction and fiction on a certain topic or era. For the fall, we will read The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai which we will discuss on 9/23. For our second meeting on Monday, October 28 at 7 pm we will read from a list of books that cover the history of the AIDS crisis.
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister.
Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.
Ages: Adult
Cost: Free
Contact: Mary at shannon@haverfordlibrary.org
