Sylvan Book Group The Great Believers

The Sylvan Oaks Adult Book Group meets on the second Saturday of each month for conversation about a wide range of authors, subjects, and perspectives. December’s selection is The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai.

The novel moves between Chicago in 1985 and Paris three decades later. In Chicago, Yale Tishman watches the AIDS epidemic devastate his circle of friends while trying to hold onto his career, relationships, and a rapidly changing sense of what the future might hold.

The story also follows Fiona, whose life remains deeply connected to the friends she lost during the crisis. Years later in Paris, she searches for her estranged daughter while confronting the ways grief, memory, love, friendship, and survival continue to shape her life.

The December discussion takes place in the Sylvan Oaks Meeting Room as part of the library’s monthly adult book group. Readers can expect conversation around community, loss, chosen family, the AIDS epidemic, resilience, remembrance, and the long reach of historical trauma.