Reading a book about a pandemic during a pandemic can be both rewarding and somewhat claustrophobic. On the one hand, you pick up on certain nuances you may have missed, or you make connections you wouldn’t have otherwise. When in the summer of 2020 I read Rebecca Makkai’s The Great Believers, set in the gay community during the early days of the AIDS crisis, I reflected on how I shared with the protagonist, to some extent, the hyper-awareness of my body and the terror of a positive […]