October 3, 2022
2022-10-03T19:00:00
Virtual - LGBTQ+ Book Club: Read "The Great Believers" *For 15-100+
Monday, October 3, 2022
We are so pleased to be partnering with the Peabody Institute Library (Peabody, MA) to bring this book club for the LGBTQ+ community! and allies! If you are between the ages of 15-100 (yes, really!) and would like to chat about books that celebrate LGBTQ+ lives, and to use books as a springboard to discuss the challenges, we hope you can join us. This month's book selection is "The Great Believers" by Rebecca Makkai. This book club will be facilitated Jen Keen of the Holliston Public Library.
About the book:
A dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris 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.
About the author:
Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, as well as the short story collection Music for Wartime. The Great Believers was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and received the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize, among other honors. Makkai is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University, and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. Learn more about Rebecca on her website.
You can order a copy of the book from our online catalog or we'll have several copies in the library if you'd like to come by and pick one up.
Please register for this event. You will receive a program link in the confirmation and reminder emails. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at ashlandprograms@minlib.net.
This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Ashland Public Library and the Peabody Institute Library (Peabody).
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