Review of I Have Some Questions for You

This was such an interesting (yet frustrating) novel that I think it would make a great pick for your book club. Here’s my Review of I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

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I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

Published on February 21, 2023 by Viking

Synopsis of I Have Some Questions for You

Now a film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past: family tragedy, 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.

What Else Has Rebecca Makkai Written?

The Borrower (2011), The Hundred-Year House (2014) and The Great Believers (2018), which was was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. I Have Some Questions for You is an Indie Next pick.

Review of I Have Some Questions for You

I Have Some Questions For You was quite the ride.

It is a very long book (about 450 pages) and I will be honest and say that I found the first 200 pages not that compelling.

Main character Bodie seems completely stuck in life. She leaves her two young children with her estranged husband and heads from L.A. to New Hampshire to teach a two-week “mini-mester” of film studies and podcasting to students at Granby, her former boarding school.

What has brought her to this point? Bodie had an unusual childhood. Her brother accidentally killed their father by pushing him off the porch. Her brother subsequently jumped (or fell) off the roof of a shoe store and died. After that, Bodie’s mother struggled with depression and Bodie was sent to Granby by a Mormon benefactor. Granby was where her senior year roommate, Thalia, was murdered in 1995.

In 2016, someone sends Bodie a video of their class performance of Camelot, taped right before Thalia’s murder. In 2018, she is headed back to Granby. She seems to have an idea of who really killed Thalia, and it’s not the guy who’s been sitting in prison for twenty years.

Bodie, I Have Some Questions For You.

Go in prepared: I Have Some Questions For You is NOT a thriller. And there were some parallels to this very unpopular book.

I Have Some Questions For You wasn’t even a mystery until the very end, when the plot did start to gather a bit of steam.

But I Have Some Questions For You does make some interesting points about the narratives we construct around tragedy and crime.

You just have to get there. Bodie spends the first two hundred pages wandering around Granby, naming all her former classmates one by one. (The Danish exchange student. The devout Muslim.) It reminded me of those long parts of the Iliad where every soldier and ship is named. There’s actually a reason for this that has nothing to do with the story and that I’ll explain in the spoiler post linked below.

Brodie seems way more furious that people keep asking her who is watching her kids than that an innocent (Black) man is in prison. (Are there always fictional miscarriages of justice in New Hampshire?)

Instead, Bodie wants to walk around campus, thinking about her own rocky experience at Granby and wondering why her married lover isn’t texting her back.

Weirdest of all: Bodie seems to know (or think she knows) who is responsible for Thalia’s death. Through the entire book she talks directly to him by name. He’s the one she has the questions for.

This both struck me as odd and frustrated me. Though I admire an author who creates such an unlikable, self-centered main character in the service of her message.

Halfway through the book, inspired by one of her podcasting students who is (of course) researching Thalia’s case, Bodie seems to focus more on maybe actually doing something. This is when the plot gains momentum.

After I finish a book like this, I ask myself: what was the point of it?

What I decided was that I Have Some Questions For You is, in the broadest sense, about the stories we all tell ourselves to make sense of the world. But life is very messy, our perspectives are skewed by how we see the world, and our agendas are sometimes at odds with those of others. Plus, some people have more power to put forth their narratives as the truth. These principles apply to tragedy and just life in general.

I did really enjoy the last half of I Have Some Questions For You, though it took some time getting there. And I think this would be a great book club pick, with a lot to discuss.

If you want to give this one a try, and since this is an Indie Next Pick, consider buying it through Bookshop.com and using the code QUESTIONS for 10% off.

I don’t want to discuss spoilers because YES this book does have a couple of surprises in the way of a mystery. Though it’s really more literary fiction.

So come over to my I Have Some Questions For You spoiler post for spoilers, a place to vent about Bodie, and a place to discuss the case.