← From the Front Porch
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Annie Jones
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- [01:26]
Annie Jones
Welcome to from the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business and life in the South. We'd been through something our parents hadn't. The war made us older than our parents. And when you're older than your parents, what are you going to do? Who's going to show you how to live? Rebecca Mackay the Great Believers I'm Annie Jones, owner of the Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week we're back with an installment of our podcast series into the Backlist. Have you ever wondered what the Bookshelf actually looks like? You can consider following us over on Instagram ookshelftville. There we post behind the scenes pictures and give important updates on store hours, events and special promotions. We'd love to see you there. Now back to the show because from the Front Porch is a podcast very much wrapped up in the comings and goings of our indie bookstore. Many of the books we feature are new or they're many times not even yet released books, which means backlist titles. Books published more than a year ago can get lost or overlooked. We launched the podcast series into the backlist back in 2024 after I got to thinking about the magic of indie bookstores and how we try to replicate that in store magic for you, our long distance customer and podcast listener. One of the most magical things to me about shopping in an indie bookstore is the serendipitous nature of it. How you might stumble upon a book you've never seen before and be inspired to read it or buy it because of an in store recommendation, or simply because the book begs to be read from the shelf. Now don't get me wrong, I get that serendipitous feeling from new titles too, but it seems to especially come from an unsung book, the book that's been out for a while, or the book that only that particular store seems to know about. So now every so often I dig through the imaginary Bookshelf vault and highlight the backlist titles I think are special books we keep on our shelves even though they were published years ago. Books we secretly hope a customer stumbles upon, asks us about, and eventually takes home for themselves. For past into the Backlist episodes, I've discussed Frances and Bernard, the Ensemble, the Mothers Defending Jacob, History of Wolves and the Sea Will Tell, and Walking With Sam. Today I am maybe breaking the rules a little bit. I am talking about a backlist book I finally picked up after years of it sitting in my mental tbr. The Great Believers by Rebecca Mackay. This is hardly an unsung book. You're going to hear all about it. But I still felt like I really wanted to talk about it. It was a book I finished and because it came out so long ago, and maybe those of you who read more Backlist than I do, maybe you feel this way all the time. But I was like, who am I going to talk about this with? And I did text back and forth with Hunter a little bit because Hunter remembers everything and so Hunter is a good person to talk about books with. But I wanted to bring it to you because I thought, well, maybe they'll care. Maybe you'll care. Maybe you'll want to hear me talk about this book. So I don't know what prompted me to finally pick this book up. It released in 2018. Left to my own devices though, like no bookshelf involved, I am 100% a mood reader. And I think something else I had been reading or watching must have triggered something in my brain. Like kind of tickled my brain to pick this up. So I did first text my personal book whisperer, Hunter to ask if this was worth reading after all these years, and he replied in the absolute affirmative. So here we are. Here is what I knew about the Great Believers before I picked it up. I knew it was a book about the AIDS crisis. I knew about its author, Rebecca Mackay. I've read I have some questions for you and I had heard her speak at the Mississippi Book Festival probably, gosh, I don't know. Three or four years ago, I knew the Great Believers was considered a best book of 2018 by the New York Times, and I knew it was considered one of best books of the 21st century. I knew it was a finalist for both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. So I honestly cannot figure out why I never read it for reference. To take you back to 2018. That was the year Les won the Pulitzer for fiction. It's the same year Jodi Cantor and Megan Tuohy and Ronan Farrow won for their coverage of the MeToo movement. Harvey Weinstein and more 2018 feels to me like approximately 100 years ago. As I told a customer the other day, what happened before 2020 feels like none of my business. The reality is that the Great Believers, for all of the above reasons and more, became a bestseller all on its own. I do not recall receiving an arc, though that doesn't mean I didn't. But if I miss reading a hot title before its release, I tend to feel behind the eight ball. If a book starts selling itself, I feel like I have to move on in reading something else. So I assume that's what happened here. Or, and I hate admitting this, it could be that once a book becomes hyped or in my opinion, overhyped, I'm almost immediately turned off by it. This is not actually a great part of my personality, nor is it fair, and I am sure I have missed out on a lot of great literature because of this. So I'm trying to rectify it and hence perhaps finally picking up the Great Believers. Once I began reading, I realized there were so many things I hadn't actually known about the Great Believers. I didn't realize it was set in Chicago. I'd always assumed New York and Paris. I didn't know there would be dual timelines, nor did I know there would be a plot line about the art world and the 1920s. I didn't know that somehow there would also be a cult involved. And although I'd still describe the Great Believers as being a book about the AIDS crisis, I also would now describe it more simply as a book about a young man named Yale Tishman, who I believe, like me, you will never forget. Although the book alternates between Yale in 1980s Chicago and a middle aged woman named Fiona in 2015 Paris in It's Yale's Story, I fell in love with Yale I was rooting for as Yale watches his friends contract aids dying far, far too young, he attempts to move forward with his life anyway, throwing himself into work at a university museum where he's acquiring a collection of paintings for a gallery show. I wish I had read this book sooner, but as Hunter and I both believe a book tends to find you at just the right time. For whatever reason, I was nudged to pick this one up and I read it smack dab in the middle of spring, which felt like the perfect backdrop to read about Yale and his friends and their hope for the future. Some stats for you. This was originally published June 4, 2018 by Viking Press. Because of its summer release, I'm hoping maybe if you have not read it, it will be time for you to pick it up this summer instead. The paperback released in 2020, so I do wonder if that also contributed to my missing this one. I missed it in 2018. If I miss a hardback sometimes I will pick it up in paperback. But it released in 2020 and we all know, we all know that 2020 was nothing more than a blur, sir. So the book is about 420 pages in my mind. Perfect. I did not think this was long at all. I probably could have kept reading. More it follows two storylines told in alternating chapters. The first, as I mention, in 1980s and eventually 1990s Chicago. And it's all about Yale Tishman, who is working for Northwestern University in their art gallery. He lives in Boys Town in Chicago and as he is navigating this career defining deal like something that would set him on a path, the community and the friends, the friendships he's made, it's all starting to crumble around him due to the AIDS epidemic. The second plotline, the second timeline takes place in Paris 2015. That main character is Fiona Marcus. She is a character in Yale's storyline. She is Yale has a friend named Nico. Nico's friend dies from aids. His sister is Fiona, and Fiona is kind of this matriarchal sisterly figure in the book. She considers all of Yale's and Nico's friends like her boys, her friends, and she stands by Nico even when his own parents won't. She never loses touch with her brother and I almost think she's trying to pay penance or make amends by continuing to care for all of Nico's friends as they grapple with the consequences of AIDS and the symptoms of aids. And so we get to see Fiona both as a young woman and then in the 2015 plotline. She is a mother searching for her daughter who participated in this religious cult and has been estranged from her mother ever since. Kind of a weird plotline, I'm going to be honest. But it does eventually make sense, and I do believe Rebecca Mackay eventually kind of ties it all together in a beautiful way. The Critics Consensus as you can probably tell from all of the awards it received, the consensus was overwhelmingly popular and positive. It received a starred review pretty much everywhere. The Publisher's Weekly review called it or said that as the two narratives intertwine, Makai creates a powerful, unforgettable meditation not on death, but rather on the power and gift of life. I really liked that review because I think when you say that a book is about the AIDS epidemic or the AIDS crisis, you just immediately think, oh, this is going to be sad. And it is. I mean, it's gut wrenching and heartbreaking, but it's also really hopeful. I mean, the way that Yale moves through the world while his friends essentially die around him. I mean, there's a moment in the book where he even articulates to himself. I can't wait for this day to be over.
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Save on Family Essentials at Safeway and Albertsons this week at Safeway and Albertsons enjoy eight piece double breaded famous chicken fried or baked dark meat featuring four legs and four thighs for just $5.99 each. Member price available in the deli and sweet red cherries are $2.97 per pound limit 6 pounds member price with digital coupon plus 24 ounce selected varieties of fresh cut fruit bowls are $5 each. Visit safeway or albertsons.com for more deals and ways to save.
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Annie Jones
Just try to relax, okay?
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- [13:55]
Annie Jones
I just want to live a normal existence. Like I think he just, he says something like he just wants to live like this quiet day. This quiet normal day. And I found yes, the book to be sad, but I also found it to be really hopeful and meaningful. And so I thought the Publisher's Weekly review really reflected that. It also received a starred review in Kirkus, Kirkus said, as compulsively readable as it is thoughtful and moving, an unbeatable fictional combination. And that's the truth. Like I started reading and could not put this one down. In their review, Kirkus also referenced what I think, especially in 2026, but even in 2018 was a common critique, which is can Rebecca Mackay, who is a heterosexual woman, write this book, which is at least in one of the plot lines about a gay young man? And so Kirkus addresses that, the Kirkus Review said, as Mackay acknowledges in an Author's note, and she does, When a heterosexual woman writes a novel about aids, some may feel she has crossed the line between allyship and appropriation. On the contrary, her rich portraits of death faced with varying degrees of gallantry, make this tender, keening novel an impressive act of imaginative empathy. Dan Lopez in the LA Review of Books also kind of referenced this critique and kind of answered this question of is this Makai's book to write? And he really emphasizes the secondary plot line, which belongs to Fiona. And that's something Hunter mentioned to me as well. But Dan Lopez wrote, MacKay's great project with the Great Believers, then, is to recuperate a place for women at the center of a historical AIDS narrative that has predominantly focused on the gay male victims and left little room for the women who also bore its heavy burden. It's worth mentioning here briefly, that while Mackay conducted interviews with many women caretakers while researching this novel, this is of course, a work of fiction. What makes the Great Believers great is Mackay's skill at uncovering facets of historical record many of us may feel we are at comprehensively understand. What makes it an enduring work of fiction is the elegance with which it transmutes the quotidian a friend's boat, shoes, a passing fancy for that cute house you often pass on your way home, one of any number of political rallies you find yourself attending into an evocative time capsule that captures the essence of an entire life. Good novels stick with us on the strength of their inventive plots or beautiful writing, but the best novels make us feel as if we've gained a new friend who will stay with us for the rest of our lives. Many of the men and women in Makai's latest don't survive to the novel's last page, but their memories will stick with the reader long after the COVID is closed. I'm actually going to put a link in the show notes to Dan's review because it is so beautiful and I think grapples with the question of who can write which stories pretty well. But I think, you know, MacKay's own author note kind of addresses this concern and I think addresses it really well. There was a review in the New York Times as well. Michael Cunningham was also very positive in his review, although he also had one of my maybe minor critiques. He wrote, although I can't help wishing the two stories had worked together more potently. That doesn't detract from the deep emotional impact of the Great Believers, nor does it diminish Makai's accomplishment. She has borne unblinking witness to history and to a horrific episode already in danger among Americans that is of becoming a horror story out of the past. Although more than a million people in this country are still infected with HIV, I hope that won't make MacKay's novel, he writes, sound like obligatory reading for concerned citizens. In fact, it's an antidote to our general urge to forget what we'd rather not remember. But it's also, which is more important, an absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it's like to live during times of crisis and who among us believes that at any point in the near future we'll cease living in times of crisis, whatever form they may take. I loved that so much because it kind of addressed one of my issues with the book, which was a very minor one because again, I thought Makai ultimately brought together the two plot lines really well. But Fiona's relationship with her daughter. There were a couple of moments where I was like, I don't want to be reading about this. I want to be reading about Fiona and Nico or Yale in the 1980s. I don't want to be reading about Fiona and her daughter. But of course, there's some, you know, there's some generational trauma there that winds up being pretty important. And I, I think Makai wound up bringing it all together. But I loved how both Cunningham and Lopez talked about what sticks with you from this book. And when I reviewed it on my private Instagram, what people kept writing in the comments was, I loved Yale. They didn't say I loved the Great Believers, although they did. You know, I think everybody commenting loved the Great Believers and thought it was a great book. But you walk away from the Great Believers, and I think Makai even writes this. My paperback edition came with, like, an interview with her, and she, she writes that Yale Tishman is like, forever embedded in her brain. Like he is somebody who will stick with her forever. And that is also how I felt about him. This gets 4.29 stars on Goodreads with 175,000 ratings. That's a lot of ratings and 19,000 reviews. You know my complicated feelings about Goodreads. But also sometimes it makes me feel better that, like, a public, a Pulitzer finalist and a National Book Award finalist could still just receive 4.29 stars on Goodreads. So yes, this was a finalist for the Pulitzer and the NBA. It was the winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Press Prize. My one sentence hand sell. A young man on the cusp of his career as an art acquisitions manager navigates friendship and grief during the AIDS crisis in 1980s Chicago. I think that would be my one minute hand sell or my one sentence hand sell. Because I really do want readers to know. This is a book about friends. This is a book about friendship. And not just Yale's friendship with Fiona, but Yale's. Yale's wonderful community he's created in Boys Town. And you get a sense that Yale, who maybe came from a pretty conservative background, that he has just been engulfed in and embraced by this beautiful community. And what a gift it has been to him. I loved reading about that. I'll also tell you I would not, in my hand sell pitch the Paris piece, the Paris storyline, because I do think the Chicago storyline is the stronger one and it is the more memorable one. But there are moments in the Chicago plotline that do, of course, eventually tie in and lead to the Paris of it all. But the other thing that I might mention in a hand sell is not only is this historical fiction about the 80s, but also in acquiring some art, Yale befriends Fiona's aunt Nora. And Nora lived during World War I. And so there are these great lines and I'm gonna read a couple cause I really loved them, that make you realize history really does repeat itself. And that's why I liked Michael Cunningham's review in the New York Times. This is a great book to read in times of crisis because we're always time of crisis. I lately have just been thinking so much about how we act like what we're experiencing is novel. Maybe that's the millennial way. Like we're so unique. No, we're not. No, we're not. Like every generation has its crisis and you have to live through it. And that's one of the Reasons I think Yale and his friends provide such comfort is because they're doing it, they're living through it and directly impacted by the way, by the crisis itself. So anyway, there's this wonderful line where Nora is talking to Yale and she's, you know, she's very old, reflecting back on her life during World War I. And she says, I got back to Paris and Paris was gone. Not the city, just the. I don't know if I can explain. The boys were gone, our classmates, or they were missing limbs. There was an architecture student who came back intact, only he'd lost his voice from mustard gas. Never said another word. Everyone that spring just wandered. You'd find a friend in a cafe, and even if you'd hardly known them, you'd run and kiss them and you'd exchange news about who was dead. I don't know how you compare it to anything else. I don't know how you could. Yale had missed a step. Compare what? Well, you, your friends. I don't know how it's like anything other than war. And then there's another line where Yale says he can't imagine going out and selecting a brand new cohort. How unimaginable that after the war, Nora had lived another seven decades that she'd known the world this long without her first adult friends, her contemporaries. I loved that and I appreciate it so much that not only is this a reflection on 1980s Chicago, it's a reflection on World War I. It's a reflection, ultimately, in 2015, Paris and all the crises the characters are facing global and local and personal. Anyway, I loved that and I would. That's not in a one sentence hand sell, but if I had some time with a customer, I think I'd discuss that because I do wonder if this might have missed some readers because the AIDS epidemic sounds like such a dire thing to have to read about and such a sad thing to have to read about. And I think what happens, and I think we're watching it happen right now, is that when we are living in times of crisis, we don't wanna read about crisis. There's a reason romance books tick up, or sci fi or fantasy reads, but I. I don't know, I don't want to. I don't want to get on some kind of platform, but. But I do think it's important to read books like this in times of crisis so we can remember and read about how people lived through them. To turn a blind eye to them would be to do them a disservice. So Anyway, I that's what it kind of made me think of. So what would I put this on the shelf with? Well, immediately. And the comp that immediately came to my mind was In Memoriam by Alice Swynn. Because of the World War I of it all. Heart the Lover by Lily King for the friendship Elements Less by Andrew Sean Grier. There's a book that Rebecca Mackay mentions in the acknowledgments, a graphic novel called Taking Turns, Stories from HIV AIDS Care Units 371 by M.K. zierwick how to Survive a Plague by David France A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara the Farewell Symphony by Edmund White and the Band Played on by Randy Schiltz. I believe there's also a film adaptation of that, if you are interested. Just Kids by Patti Smith Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin, which is the the book that I added to my TBR after finishing this. So Old, so Young by Grant gender 4 squares by Bobby Finger. If you like historical fiction that makes you immediately want to go deep dive other things, this is the book for you. This will immediately make you want to find other, other books, other documentaries. I mean, I immediately wanted to do kind of a deep dive, and so some of these books maybe reflect that a little bit. Favorite quote? Well, I mean, I mean, there are so many. I'm so glad I had a physical copy. I got a paperback of this and kind of marked mine up, but here is one. It's always a matter, isn't it, of waiting for the world to come unraveled. When things hold together, it's always only temporary. Read this book if you love books about friendship and grief and art. And then is there a TV adaptation? My literal note in my notes is no, there could be. But I think they'd ruin it. So please, please, Netflix, if you're listening, don't touch this. Just don't leave it as it is. We got what we needed. We got what we wanted. I hope I've expressed just how much I loved this book and how much I think it is actually the perfect book to read right now. It is a book that could so easily fall into despair. But in my mind it doesn't now. It doesn't shine. It does not shy away from the terrible things. Terrible things happen in this book that are just a punch in the gut. But ultimately I think it's a book about how do you live when the world is on fire and when that fire is coming for you? I mean, Yale and his friends are at the very center of it. And they're creating art, they're taking photographs, they're noticing the world around them. There's this great line about how this photographer kind of at the center of the book, or maybe he's not the center, but he's one of the friends and how he notices things. They're attending protests, they're writing newspapers, they're creating galleries, they're they're doing. They're doing their life anyway. And I, I think that's profound. So highly, highly recommend. If you've never picked this one up, I hope maybe this episode can give you the nudge to do so. That is the Great Believers by Rebecca Mackay this week I'm listening to Go Gentle by Maria Semple from the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of the Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow the Bookshelf's daily happenings on Instagram ookshelftville, and all the books from today's Episode can be purchased online through our store website, bookshelf thomasville.com a full transcript of today's podcast episode can be found at. From the Front Porch Podcast Special thanks to Studio D Podcast Production for production of from the Front Porch and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations. Our executive producers of Today's Episode are Cami Tidwell, Jamie Treadwell, Linda Lee Jost, Gene Queens, Martha Stephanie Dean Beth Ashley Farrell, Amanda Wickham, Nicole Marcy Wendy Jenkins. Thank you all for your support of from the Front Porch. If you'd like to support from the Front Porch, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your input helps us make the show even better and helps us reach new listeners. All you have to do is open up the podcast app on your phone. Look for from the Front Porch. Scroll down until you see. Write a review and tell us what you think. Or if you're so inclined to support us. Over on Patreon, where we have three levels of support, each level has an amazing number of benefits like bonus content, access to live events, discounts and giveaways. Just go to patreon.com from the front Porch we're so grateful for you and we look forward to meeting back here next week. Podbean, your message amplified.
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Annie Jones
I know what I'm doing, Mom.
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Go, team.
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Annie Jones
Shh.
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