Title: The Great Believers

Author: Rebecca Makkai

Publisher: Viking 2018

Genre: Fiction

Pages: 421

Rating: DNF

Reading Challenges: 

If you knew the date of your death, how would you live your life?

It's 1969 in New York City's Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a traveling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes.

The prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in '80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality.

This is the September book club selection for the Girly Book Club. I gave it almost 100 pages and just couldn’t continue. I was intrigued by the storyline of the AIDS crisis in Chicago, but greatly disliked the modern storyline. Also, I could not connect to any of the characters. So many of them felt so flat to me. Nope.

Next up on the TBR pile: