A novel on the border between pop and literary fiction - The Great Believers

Based on first 6 or so chapters - about 60 pp.? - Rebecca Makkai's 2018 novel, The Great Believers (in what, I wonder - don't know yet) appears to be one of those books that stands on the border between literary and popular fiction - a good place to be, if you can make it work! In part it feels like a big, gossipy novel w/ lots of friends and lovers and their complex inter-relations over time: The first chapter takes place at and around the funeral of one of the first victims of the AIDS crisis (set in 1985) as seen from within the vibrant and lively male gay community in Chicago. We focus on one of the men, named Yale (yes), and his sorrow at the loss and his puzzlement about how this emerging epidemic will affect his life and his current partnership. Makkai constructs the novel in oscillating chapters - one set in 1985 and the other some 30+ years later into the near present. As the narrative progresses, we learn more about Yale and his work, as a development officer at an art museum on the Northwestern campus. His work brings him in contact w/ a potential donor - the great-aunt of the man mourned in the 1st chapter, as it happens, and he has to coddle this donor and assess the value of her potential bequest. The other chapters involve the sister (?) of the man mourned in the first chapter, Fiona, now (in the present) of mature adult woman who travels to Paris in her quest to track down her adult daughter who has vanished into some kind of cult or political group. The relationship between these two plot strands, other than the tenuous connection via the link to the mourned man - Nico - is not yet clear to me. Makkai has an unusual way of leading the plot down some intriguing byways and then pulling back a bit: For example, Fiona meets a man on the plane to Paris who is clearly trying to scam her, pretending he left his wallet back at the gate and needs some money to get by; we don't see him again once she's landed, however - at least it appears that we don't. What to make of this? Similarly, during the mourning for Nico, Yale goes upstairs to take a break in one of the bedrooms and when he returns to the scene of the gathering the entire group of friends and mourners has vanished w/out a trace; it seems mysterious and sort of Twilight Zone-like, but as it turns out they just all took off and left Yale to himself upstairs - not really credible, to me, and an interesting plot twist unraveled to quickly and to no effect.