I Have Some Questions For You

Author: Rebecca Makkai
Genre: Crime Fiction
438 pages
Publisher: Viking, 2023

Synopsis
A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past—the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia’s death and the conviction of the school’s athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers—needs—to let sleeping dogs lie.

But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn’t as much of an outsider at Granby as she’d thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.

My review
I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai is a character-forward literary novel, and one I really wanted to love. Makkai’s writing is excellent, and I was immediately drawn in by her narrative style. It’s clear throughout the novel that she’s trying to say something meaningful: offering a critique of true crime as entertainment, exploring the #MeToo–era, unhealthy relationships, cancel culture, and the unreliability of memory.

I also went in expecting a complex, tightly woven thriller at the novel’s core, and that’s where the book ultimately fell short for me. While the ideas are ambitious, the execution felt uneven, and the central mystery never fully came together in a compelling way. I was underwhelmed, feeling that the novel was trying to tackle too many themes at once, leaving many of them underdeveloped.

The story follows Bodie Kane, a successful podcaster in her early forties. As a teenager, Bodie attended the elite boarding school Granby, where she always felt like an outsider. In her senior year, her popular roommate Thalia was murdered. A young athletic trainer at the school, Omar, was quickly convicted, despite flimsy evidence and lingering doubts about his guilt. Years later, when Bodie returns to Granby to teach a course, she becomes newly fixated on the case, noticing troubling dynamics she didn’t fully understand as a teenager, particularly Thalia’s close relationship with a male music teacher.

As the story unfolds, one of Bodie’s students launches a podcast investigating Thalia’s death, reopening old wounds and raising new questions. At the same time, Bodie’s personal life grows increasingly complicated. Her semi-estranged husband faces accusations of coercive behavior from a younger ex-girlfriend, while Bodie’s own affair with a married man begins to unravel. These parallel storylines echo the novel’s larger themes, but for me, they never fully came together.

This may be a case of “it’s me, not the book,” especially given how many readers loved this novel. While it didn’t work for me, I still admire Makkai’s talent and ambition.

Overall, I Have Some Questions for You was a disappointment, but it hasn’t put me off Makkai as an author. I’m a big fan of her writing and will absolutely pick up her future novels, hoping that the next one will resonate more strongly with me.

My recommendation: Makkai is an excellent writer. Perhaps pick up one of her earlier novels!