Author Rebecca Makkai To Appear In Winnetka

WINNETKA-GLENCOE, IL - From The Book Stall: On Tuesday, September 11th at 6:30 pm, The Book Stall (811 Elm Street in Winnetka, IL) Is thrilled to welcome back our great friend Rebecca Makkai to talk about her new novel, The Great Believers. Set in contemporary Paris, and in 1980s Chicago at the height of the AIDS crisis, Makkai's novel is one of the most acclaimed books of recent months. Makkai consulted with longtime Chicago bookseller, writer, and historian Owen Keehnenwhen she was researching The Great Believers, and he will lead the conversation with Rebecca this evening. This event is free and open to the public. For more information, or to reserve a signed copy of The Great Believers, call us at 847-446-8880.

As the novel opens, it’s 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.

San Francisco Chronicle calls The Great Believers, "Compulsively readable...a relentless engine mowing back and forth across decades, zooming in on subtlest physical and emotional nuances of dozens of characters, missing no chance to remind us what's at stake."

The Library Journal says, "At turns heartbreaking and hopeful, the novel brings the first years of the AIDS epidemic into very immediate view, in a manner that will seem nostalgic to some and revelatory to others...Makkai's sweeping fourth novel shows the compassion of chosen families and the tension and distance that can exist in our birth ones."

Rebecca Makkai is the author of The Borrower, The Hundred-Year House, which won the Novel of the Year Award from the Chicago Writers Association, and Music for Wartime. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Harper's, and Tin House, among others. She lives outside Chicago with her husband and two daughters.

The Book Stall, a fixture on Chicago's north shore, sponsors a wide variety of book-related events both in the store and across Chicagoland. Check out our website for a complete schedule.

Image via The Book Stall