Rebecca Makkai
Autor(a) de The Great Believers
About the Author
Rebecca Makkai is an author, based in the Chicago area. She holds as MA from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and a BA from Washington and Lee University. She was an elementary Montessori teacher for twelve years before becoming a writer. She is on the MFA faculties of Sierra mostrar mais Nevada College and Northwestern University. And she is the Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. She has had her short fiction published in such anthologies as The Pushcart Prize XLI, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, New Stories from the Midwest, and Best American Fantasy. She has a short story collection entitled Music for Wartime. She won the 2017 Pushcart prize for short fiction. Her first novel was entitled The Borrower. Her other novels include The Hundred-Year House and The Great Believers. She won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for fiction with her novel, The Great Believers. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos
Image credit: © Ryan Fowler
Obras de Rebecca Makkai
Associated Works
Astoria to Zion: Twenty-Six Stories of Risk and Abandon from Ecotone's First Decade (2014) — Contribuinte — 13 cópias
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Data de nascimento
- 1978-04-20
- Sexo
- female
- Nacionalidade
- USA
- Local de nascimento
- Skokie, Illinois, USA
- Locais de residência
- Chicago, Illinois, USA
- Educação
- Washington and Lee University (BA)
Middlebury College (Bread Loaf School of English) - Ocupação
- teacher
- Pequena biografia
- Rebecca Makkai (born April 20, 1978) is an American novelist and short-story writer. Her first novel, The Borrower, was released in June 2011. It was a Booklist Top Ten Debut, an Indie Next pick, an O Magazine selection, and one of Chicago Magazine's choices for best fiction of 2011. It was translated into seven languages. Her short stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 and as well as in ″The Best American Nonrequired Reading″" 2009 and 2016; she received a 2017 Pushcart Prize and a 2014 NEA fellowship. Her fiction has also appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, The Threepenny Review, New England Review, and Shenandoah. Her nonfiction has appeared in Harpers and on Salon.com and the New Yorker website. Makkai's stories have also been featured on Public Radio International's Selected Shorts and This American Life. Her second novel, The Hundred-Year House, is set in the Northern suburbs of Chicago, and was published by Viking/Penguin in July 2014, having received starred reviews in Booklist, Publishers Weekly and Library Journal. It won the 2015 Novel of the Year award from the Chicago Writers Association and was named a best book of 2014 by BookPage. Her short story collection, Music for Wartime, was published by Viking in June 2015. A starred and featured review in Publishers Weekly said, "Though these stories alternate in time between WWII and the present day, they all are set, as described in the story “Exposition,” within “the borders of the human heart”—a terrain that their author maps uncommonly well.” The Kansas City Star wrote that "if any short story writer can be considered a rock star of the genre, it's Rebecca Makkai."
Her novel about the AIDS epidemic in 1980s Chicago, titled The Great Believers was published by Viking/Penguin Random House in June 2018. The Great Believers won the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction. It was also a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, and won the LA Times Book Prize, the ALA Stonewall Award, and the Chicago Review of Books Award.
Membros
Discussions
The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai - Jun 2011 LTER em Reviews of Early Reviewers Books (Outubro 2011)
Resenhas
“He’d be the world’s luckiest man to stand there at the end of it all, to be the one left, trying to remember. The unluckiest too” (253).
This story moves from Chicago in the 1980s to Paris in 2015. And while I appreciated the 2015 chapters for how they were threaded together with the 1980s chapters, I really just wanted to stay in the chapters with Yale and Asher and Terrence—because despite this being about AIDS in the ‘80s and knowing the ending wouldn’t be pretty, I desperately wanted those brief moments of dreamlike euphoria amongst friends and lovers (before the death sentences were ultimately delivered) to live on.
One of my favorite things about this book is the way the people and politics and plot are expertly layered and connected and revealed, unfolding to show how Nora and Yale and Fiona are all united by art and war: WWI and the war of the AIDS epidemic. And so much of being caught up in a war is being witness to ugly death and then living with the absence of friends. The other side of this tragedy, though, that’s saturated throughout the story is indignation. I found myself really angry throughout this book, probably because it’s the history of my lifetime—not some “Lost Generation” narrative. And so I found myself completely incensed for how these men were shamed and treated; incensed by the randomness of the disease (who lives and who dies); incensed at our lack of knowledge and understanding and empathy and access to healthcare in the 1980s.
Like the best art and literature reveal, there’s often beauty from ashes, but this book blows up the ashes, incinerating your heart. That may not sound like a ringing endorsement (because, yes, there will be tears), but even though this is such a heartbreaking history, it’s such a worthwhile, important read.
… (mais)
This story moves from Chicago in the 1980s to Paris in 2015. And while I appreciated the 2015 chapters for how they were threaded together with the 1980s chapters, I really just wanted to stay in the chapters with Yale and Asher and Terrence—because despite this being about AIDS in the ‘80s and knowing the ending wouldn’t be pretty, I desperately wanted those brief moments of dreamlike euphoria amongst friends and lovers (before the death sentences were ultimately delivered) to live on.
One of my favorite things about this book is the way the people and politics and plot are expertly layered and connected and revealed, unfolding to show how Nora and Yale and Fiona are all united by art and war: WWI and the war of the AIDS epidemic. And so much of being caught up in a war is being witness to ugly death and then living with the absence of friends. The other side of this tragedy, though, that’s saturated throughout the story is indignation. I found myself really angry throughout this book, probably because it’s the history of my lifetime—not some “Lost Generation” narrative. And so I found myself completely incensed for how these men were shamed and treated; incensed by the randomness of the disease (who lives and who dies); incensed at our lack of knowledge and understanding and empathy and access to healthcare in the 1980s.
Like the best art and literature reveal, there’s often beauty from ashes, but this book blows up the ashes, incinerating your heart. That may not sound like a ringing endorsement (because, yes, there will be tears), but even though this is such a heartbreaking history, it’s such a worthwhile, important read.
… (mais)
This feels like a long book, a long haul which I only intermittently enjoyed. Bodie Kane, film professor and podcaster returns to the privileged boarding school where she was a scholarship pupil. She finds herself, together with a couple of the pupils in her group returning to investigate the death of her former room mate which occurred when she was a student there. The three of them are sure the wrong man was incarcerated for the crime, and Bodie has her own ideas. There's a long cast list here which I found hard to keep track of. Though there's plenty to make you think here - about power, about class, about sex and violence and about letting sleeping dogs lie - the whole book felt longer than it needed to be. Oddly, what I mainly got from this book was some idea of the American boarding school system: though as my understanding of its English equivalent is shaky, to say the least, I'm not sure how relevant this is to me.… (mais)
There is a lot to think about after reading this book. I can clearly see what the author is trying to do... she wants us to contemplate all the news stories about the abuse and murder of women, which has become so common that we are almost immune to the horror. She does this by repeating anonymous stories as a litany...
"That was her flip-flop beside the van. That was her comb in the ravine. That was her bank card at the ATM in Kansas, but that wasn't heron the security footage....That was her phone, tossed off the overpass. That was her blood in the bathroom. That was her hair in the attic. We're lucky to find this much. That was her laundry, still in the dryer. This was her body, but she's long gone." (p. 431)
Bodie is trying to solve the murder of her high school roommate, because she believes that the man serving time for the murder was wrongfully convicted. She returns to her high school and get her podcast students interested in the case. The book is written as a stream of consciousness letter to her one-time hero (or crush?), her music teacher Mr. Bloch.
Unfortunately, Bodie is written as a feminist #Metoo/Social Justice Warrior, but comes off as an unhappy, manipulative middle-aged woman who cannot get over being an outsider during her high school years. As she struggles to gain adult perspective, her whiny pining over the once hot high school dudes, her longing for acceptance by the in-crowd can sometimes be a little sad and pathetic.
"When someone asks me if I liked boarding school, I can no longer base my answer, by judgement, on the people I knew. Once, I might have thought of you. I might have thought of any number of people who weren't what I once believed. But I can still love the place itself... this was a place where someone could claim a small corner, a place where, by the end of four years, I'd be able to say I was part of something. Somewhere on campus, I'd find a place to leave a piece of myself. I was here. I was here." p. 422
5 stars for the plot
2 stars for the main character
3 stars total… (mais)
"That was her flip-flop beside the van. That was her comb in the ravine. That was her bank card at the ATM in Kansas, but that wasn't heron the security footage....That was her phone, tossed off the overpass. That was her blood in the bathroom. That was her hair in the attic. We're lucky to find this much. That was her laundry, still in the dryer. This was her body, but she's long gone." (p. 431)
Bodie is trying to solve the murder of her high school roommate, because she believes that the man serving time for the murder was wrongfully convicted. She returns to her high school and get her podcast students interested in the case. The book is written as a stream of consciousness letter to her one-time hero (or crush?), her music teacher Mr. Bloch.
Unfortunately, Bodie is written as a feminist #Metoo/Social Justice Warrior, but comes off as an unhappy, manipulative middle-aged woman who cannot get over being an outsider during her high school years. As she struggles to gain adult perspective, her whiny pining over the once hot high school dudes, her longing for acceptance by the in-crowd can sometimes be a little sad and pathetic.
"When someone asks me if I liked boarding school, I can no longer base my answer, by judgement, on the people I knew. Once, I might have thought of you. I might have thought of any number of people who weren't what I once believed. But I can still love the place itself... this was a place where someone could claim a small corner, a place where, by the end of four years, I'd be able to say I was part of something. Somewhere on campus, I'd find a place to leave a piece of myself. I was here. I was here." p. 422
5 stars for the plot
2 stars for the main character
3 stars total… (mais)
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Estatísticas
- Obras
- 10
- Also by
- 10
- Membros
- 5,319
- Popularidade
- #4,679
- Avaliação
- 3.8
- Resenhas
- 365
- ISBNs
- 85
- Idiomas
- 11
- Favorito
- 3
I've read and enjoyed two other books by RM, one a charming YA novel about it a librarian and her favorite student, the other an accomplished narrative of historical fiction depicting the years of the AIDS crisis in America. It appears she has taken in a new genre with this somewhat classic Donna Tart- like boarding school whodunit.
The story is narrated by Bodie Kane who return to Grady, a boarding school for wealthy, intelligent kids. Bodie is returning to teach a winter session course on podcasting and film history. To those who knew her as the intimidating goth like 15 year old, her current notoriety is a bit surprising. "The need to keep busy is both a symptom of high-functioning anxiety and the key to my success. My podcast at the time was Starlet Fever, a serial history of women in film—the ways the industry chewed them up and spat them out."
Returning to the campus also has her returning to the biggest event in her life, the murder of her roommate Thalia Keith and the rushed prosecution of the black athletic trainer, Omar Evans. Makkai interjects his experiences in prison as well, including a near fatal stabbing.
One of the highlights of the writing style is her choice to have her narrator write this account to her former drama teacher who she believes is the real killer. At times she also dedicates sections to several others who may have been responsible, including Thalia's boyfriend Robbie, her catty girlfriends who were jealous of her, and even the narrator herself.
The story is definitely propelling and leads to a satisfying conclusion with plenty of commentary about the state of the world prior to the Me-Too movement. I enjoyed the novel and will continue look forward to her work.
Lines
One photo—her laughing with her mouth but not her eyes, suggesting some deep unhappiness—tends to feature in clickbait.
Yahav was skittish and unpredictable, a handsome Israeli bunny rabbit, equally likely to drive straight here as to vanish into the woods forever.
Then, out of nowhere, came Thalia Keith. (Theme music! Follow spot! All heads turn.) Black curls down her back, clear olive skin, eyes people reverently described as aqua. Flat-chested, which helped explain why rather than killing her on sight, a high-status group of junior girls instantly adopted her.
The dosage of my antidepressant is such that I haven’t cried actual tears in a decade, but there are times when I want so badly to cry that I make all the noises of crying, press my fists into my eyes so I feel something similar.
The actual statistic, if you care, is that worldwide, 38.6 percent of murdered women are killed by intimate partners. In some countries that’s much higher.
In Anne’s car, NPR was still going. It was the one where they found green synthetic fibers between her teeth. It was the one where her shoes were gone. The one where her bike was gone. The one where her fingernails were gone, broken in the fight.… (mais)