I do always have an eye on the problems of possible appropriation.

I also tend to be good friends with them in real life. I feel more comfortable writing gay men than I do writing straight men. I think there is more common with straight women and gay men than, for instance, with straight women and straight men, for sure. You look at someone like Michael Cunningham or at Darren Star and Sex and the City. It’s interesting, I also think that gay men happen to write straight women spectacularly well. Can you please say something about this trend?

When I interviewed you in 2015 about Music for Wartime, you told me you were working on a novel set in 1985, “with the specter of AIDS looming in the background.” This made me think about how 20 years ago, straight women such as Ann Patchett ( The Magician’s Assistant) and Jane Hamilton ( The Short History of a Prince), were creating these wonderful gay characters, and more recently you, Hanya Yanagihara ( A Little Life) and Meg Wolitzer ( The Interestings), for example are doing something similar. All pleasant, complimentary reviews, of course you’re over the moon about. You’re grateful for all reviews, no matter what someone’s opinion is. You hope that it all works and that people get it. It’s a little bit like getting dressed in the dark and showing up at a party without having looked in the mirror. You work “in the dark” for a few years, alone, writing without an audience, not knowing how people are going to receive the book. Everything’s a bit of a blur to me right now it’s publication day today. I think we think of it more as covering movies and music and things like that, but they do a fantastic job on books. I don’t think we normally think of it as the venue for that. Entertainment Weekly actually has fantastic book coverage. Rebecca Makkai: Thank you! I’ve been thrilled about getting really good magazine coverage ahead of publication which always means a lot. What does a review such as that mean to you? Gregg Shapiro: Rebecca, I’d like to begin by congratulating you on the rave review for The Great Believers in the June 22nd issue of Entertainment Weekly. I had the privilege of speaking with Rebecca on June 19th, the publication date of The Great Believers. Makkai’s dazzling epic about the AIDS epidemic and its impact on a group of friends in Chicago during the 1980s is insightful, sensitive, revelatory and nothing short of a tearjerker. Starred reviews in Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, as well as an A- review in Entertainment Weekly, are not exaggerations. If you’ve been waiting for the arrival of the best book of 2018, look no further than The Great Believers (Viking, 2018), the new novel by Rebecca Makkai.

Review of the great believers