I Have Some Questions for You

I don’t know why so many of us are fascinated by true crime. I know I’ve speculated in the past but I’ve come to think that there are just too many reasons that draw people to stories about murder and violence and the hope of justice. Rebecca Makkai’s masterful new novel, I Have Some Questions for You, doesn’t answer this question either. Instead, it wrestles with our cultural obsession by reminding us that all of these stories that we consume through podcasts and articles and books and documentaries are about real people. This book also reminds us how the reality behind these stories is a lot more complicated to investigate and prosecute than we realize from the hour or less encapsulations we usually receive. What makes this book so amazing is that Makkai can do all of this at the same time that she gives us well-rounded, human characters and an amazing plot...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.

Very good. 4.5 stars. It's well-written, with an interesting setting and an engaging mystery. I enjoyed the parts dealing with twitter, podcasting, and film (that took me back to my Film As Narrative class in college). There's a lot going on in the book, but for me its overarching concern is harassment of and violence against women.

At first, I wasn't sure about the second person narration. Then I got used to it, and ultimately I decided that it worked well. In thinking about why it's written that way, I realize that it's technically addressed to a particular character, but it also occurred to me that it's implicating the reader - me - on some level. As a man reading this, I found that to be appropriate, considering the subject. Maybe it's the feminist lens through which I tend to view things, but thinking about it that way added an extra layer of meaning to the whole thing (including the title) for me.

Anyway, I read in the Submakk newsletter on Substack that the book has been optioned for a limited series, and I really hope the series gets made.

This is more than a story about a mystery. It’s a beautifully written depiction of life at a small boarding school, a microcosm in the woods. What happened there, amongst the students, was not beautiful, but the way Bodie Kane looks back on some important events, as an adult, is well expressed. Much of the novel is written to someone offstage, a character the reader will learn much more about along the way.

Bodie, a successful podcaster, has returned to the Granby School, the boarding school where she spent her vulnerable teen-aged years, for a few weeks to teach a class. When she asks her students to choose a topic to investigate for their own podcast projects, one of them expresses the interest to delve into a murder that happened at the school while Bodie was a student there, decades ago. It’s a crime for which a man named Omar is serving time, and also a controversial subject matter, since there are many people who believe the investigation was flawed, and conspiracy theories abound on social media.

Bodie is both pleased and a bit scared at the prospect of getting into this subject matter. It’s been on her mind, something about her past that won’t stay buried. In the meantime, Bodie has her own complicated life to deal with, along with resurfacing memories of the events that happened around the time of Thalia Keith’s murder.

In the years since this tragic event, society’s values have shifted and the world is very different, largely because of social media and an increased awareness of social injustices. So, the time seems to be right to look at this case again.

This is a fascinating story, and I was intrigued almost as much about the flawed perceptions the students of the 1990s had about each other as I was about the obviously flawed justice system. This novel does not tie things up in a neat bow, and I admire that, also.

Thank you very much to Netgalley and Penguin Group Viking for sharing this novel with me!