I can’t resist a joke: Do you have some questions about I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai? Me too! Need a list of all those characters, or a plot summary? Need to talk about the ending of the book? Join us! Spoiler Discussion: I Have Some Questions For You.
Table of Contents for Spoiler Discussion: I Have Some Questions for You
Google is WRONG lol. Don’t listen to them.
- Spoiler Discussion: I Have Some Questions for You
Summary: What is I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai About?
Is I Have Some Questions For You a mystery? Well, kind of. Eventually. Like in the last 150 pages.
Bookshop.org called it a “stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, with a mystery at its heart.” I can go with that.
List of Characters in I Have Some Questions For You
The character list is INSANELY long because, as I note in my review of I Have Some Questions For You, the author slipped in dozens of names of people who made a charitable donation.
So that explains why, for the first two-thirds of the book, Bodie walks around campus endlessly name dropping classmates.
Main Character:
Elizabeth “Bodie” Kane: forty-something woman from the Midwest. She was sent to the Granby school in New Hampshire by Mormon benefactors in the 1990s.
Sometimes talks directly to a “you,” who is her former teacher, Denny Bloch. Bodie seems to think Denny is responsible for the death of her senior year roommate, Thalia.
1995 Granby Students:
- Thalia Keith: Bodie’s roommate. Student actress. Died senior year.
- Mike Stiles: Classmate who, in the present, helps Bodie and the class with the podcast
- Beth Docherty: fellow student who, in the present, comes forward and tells her story about Mr. Bloch.
- Rachel Popa: Beth’s friend
- Fran Hoffnung: Granby student and now teacher.
- Geoff Richler
- Dorian Culler: bully who tormented Bodie and Beth; probably others.
- Benjamin Scott: valedictorian
- Robbie Serenho: Thalia’s boyfriend
- Puja Sharma: friend of Thalia and possible suspect
- Bendt Jensen: Danish exchange student
- Jenny Osaka: senior class president
- Tim Busse: died in car crash
- Graham Waite: died in car crash
- Hani Kayali: new class president
- Carlotta French: friend of Bodie and Fran, she dies near the end of the book and they scatter her ashes.
Plus at least SIXTEEN other randomly mentioned students
Granby Teachers 1990s and Present
- Dr. Calahan: Granby headmistress
- Mrs. Ross
- Fran Hoffnung: now a history teacher at Granby
- Mr. Bloch: (former music teacher)and nemesis of Bodie.
- Anne: Granby admissions officer, married to Fran
- Petra: journalism teacher
- Priscilla Mancini: French teacher
- Mr. Levin: still teaches math
- Oliver Coleman: Bodie’s new housemate; marries Amber
- Mr. Dar: former history teacher
- Mr. Wysockis: tennis coach
- Miss Vogel: former physics teacher and ski coach
- Dana Ramos: former biology teacher
- Amber: new Latin teacher
- Mr. Peloni
Current Granby students (in Bodie’s podcasting class)
Alder (Ghanaian-Irish), Jamila, Alyssa, Lola, Britt (doing the podcast on Thalia).
Other characters:
- Jerome: Bodie’s husband
- Omar Evans: athletic trainer at Granby in the 1990s who was convicted in Thalia’s case.
- Dane Rubra: YouTuber obsessed with Thalia Keith’s case
- Yahav: Bodie’s extramarital hook-up, an Israeli BU Law professor.
- Severn Robeson: Bodie’s Mormon benefactor
- Vanessa Keith: Thalia’s sister. Estranged from the family, she visits Omar in prison.
Plot Summary for I Have Some Questions For You
This plot summary is also INSANELY LONG because so is the book. It’s 450 pages! I tried to keep it succinct.
In 2016, Bodie watches a You Tube video of a stage performance of Camelot. The video was recorded at the Granby School gave right before Bodie’s roommate, Thalia, was murdered in 1995. The show ended at 8:45 or 9:15 and Thalia died by midnight.
Comments on the video say that the wrong person was put in prison for Thalia’s murder. (See, Google?)
Bodie suggests that Mr. Bloch is responsible for Thalia’s death. Is this true, or a trick?
Two years later, in 2018, Bodie says goodbye to her two young children and her husband Jerome (from whom she’s separated). She heads to Granby, her old boarding school, where she’s teaching podcasting and film studies for a two-week winter mini-mester.
Bodie is a podcaster herself, but apparently not familiar with the true crime podcast community. (Her podcast is on women in Hollywood, if I remember correctly.) Separated from her husband, she has a long distance relationship with Yahav, a married law professor.
At Granby, Bodie mentions Mr. Bloch and the feeling that he is watching her. She and Fran discuss the fact the three kids died their senior year: Thalia, Tim and Graham.
Bodie starts her podcasting class. Britt, one of Bodie’s students, gives a somewhat info-dumpy speech about how true crime is problematic. (For the reasons that all of us who listen to those podcasts know: the vast majority of them focus on crimes against white women, often in a way that feels exploitative and even a little voyeuristic. That victims of color don’t get as much attention. That podcasters are making trauma-porn money off other people’s tragedies.)
Britt also says she thinks the wrong guy is in prison. (Which, I guess is a defense of podcasting. That in some cases, like this recent one, attention from podcasts actually helped get the killer in prison.)
Bodie remembers Thalia Keith, a transfer student and Bodie’s roommate. Bodie, her housemate Oliver and her old Granby friend Fran discuss that Thalia, who was murdered, was the subject of an old Dateline episode. The episode covered the fact that Omar Evans, an athletic trainer, was convicted of her murder.
Fran also mentions that Thalia was hanging around Mr. Bloch all the time, and that he was a “creeper.”
Bodie thinks about Mr Bloch, the music teacher. He was flirting with her, yet Thalia liked him.
Britt does her presentation on Thalia’s case. Thanks, Britt! Thalia died after falling from the Granby pool observation deck. But her injuries were inconsistent with a fall. Britt says Omar is innocent and Bodie pushes back a little, saying that there was evidence: his DNA on her swimsuit and his hair in her mouth.
As the story progresses, Bodie runs through various theories of the case, hers and the official ones.
Theory 1: Omar Did It
Bodie explains the prosecution’s theory: Omar was sleeping with Thalia. They suggested that she reminded him of his white ex-wife, and he was jealous about her relationship with her boyfriend Robbie. So he choked her, hit her in the head, put a swimsuit on her and threw her into the pool.
As an athletic trainer, Omar did have keys to the pool area. He stated that he left the gym at 11:18 pm but didn’t check the pool.
Britt asks Bodie to watch an interview with Omar’s mother.
Bodie’s podcasting students discuss an obvious red herring: a guy responsible for the death of the Granby Spanish teacher back in the 70s and was allegedly living in the woods in the 90s.
Britt insists that Thalia told her friends that she was having trouble with an “older guy.”
Bodie tells Mr. Bloch (in her head) that she and Fran and Carlotta and Geoff joked that Thalia was obsessed with “you,” a married teacher with kids.
She can’t imagine Mr. Bloch harming anyone. Bodie was his alibi for the night of the murder (yikes). She wonders if Bloch was the older guy that Thalia was having problems with. Wow, she’s an investigative podcaster but she just figured this out.
On a school trip to New York, Bodie saw Thalia being a little too cosy with the creepy Mr. Bloch. But she didn’t tell anyone.
In her head, Bodie asks Mr. Bloch when he first noticed Thalia.
Bodie meets with Britt about her podcast. She tells Britt that a fire alarm went off at midnight the night Thalia died so there were a bunch of kids outside at that time.
They discuss the fact that nineteen kids, mostly those who attended or were in the cast of the musical, were out drinking in the woods the night Thalia died.
Bodie raises the possibility that Thalia had been drugged. Bodie wonders to herself if the theater kids had been pre-gaming and shared Beth’s flask. Britt asks if perhaps Bodie gave the police the idea that Thalia was on drugs, and they blamed Omar.
Theory 2: Thalia took her own life
Though no details are given, Bodie says she was assaulted in college.
In her head, Bodie comes up with a theory of Thalia’s death: Thalia takes off, she wants to get away from You (Mr. Bloch). Thalia sips from Beth’s flask and thinks she can fly.
Okay, Bodie.
Britt sends Bodie some Youtube videos by a true crime vlogger named Dane Rubra.
Jerome calls to tell Bodie that he’s being cancelled on Twitter for dating Jasmine, a twenty-one year old employee of his gallery (he’s an artist) fifteen years ago, when he was in his thirties. Bodie goes on Twitter and sees that other women have been making vague accusations toward him.
Bodie watches Jasmine’s video but doesn’t see what Jerome did that was so bad.
Omar gets stabbed in prison.
Theory 3: Robbie Serenho
Maybe Thalia’s boyfriend Robbie is an entitled jock who can’t control his anger. He notices that Thalia is spending a lot of time with Mr. Bloch. That night, Robbie and Thalia are in the woods but she needs to use the bathroom. He has a key to the pool complex.
There they argue and he grabs her neck and shakes her hard, until she has a seizure. When he realizes what he’s done, he puts her in a swimsuit and slides her into the pool.
Fran seems shocked that Britt thinks Omar could be innocent. She also warns Bodie not to bring Bloch into the podcast.
Dana Ramos claims the pool had no alarm. She also gives Fran and Bodie an update on Bloch, who was teaching in Providence.
Bodie goes to a drunken adult party on campus. Priscilla warns her that Thalia’s family would be upset if the student podcast goes public and puts the case back in the spotlight.
Theory 4: Puja Did It
Thalia and her friend Puja fight and things get out of hand.
Yahav finally shows up. Bodie finds a 1995 yearbook to show him and notices a message to Bloch in it. Yahav dumps her.
Bodie recalls how growing up she never had anyone to rely on and now when she tries to rely on other people they let her down. Join the club, Bodie. Join the club.
Bodie has a seance with the kids and they ask her what she thought happened. She says she thinks the police didn’t really look very hard at any other suspects. She tells Britt to look into Denny Bloch.
They all watch Thalia’s dateline episode which points out that New Hampshire does not require taping of custodial interrogations so there is no record of Omar’s interview. He allegedly confessed during that interview but then immediately recanted.
Bodie realizes that based on the undigested alcohol in her stomach Thalia must have died around 10.
FINALLY THINGS PICK UP. FINALLY!!!
Theory 5: Bodie Did It
Did she do it and forget?
I’ll discuss this at the end, but I was sure that Bodie was a prime suspect!
Bodie FaceTimes her kids. Finally! All along she has been complaining that people ask her who is watching them. This joke was vaguely amusing at first but got old fast. Yes, an innocent man might be in prison, but Bodie has to snark that her kids have a father who can watch them.
Thalia’s sister Vanessa agrees to talk to Britt. Bodie agrees to find more of her classmates for Britt to talk to.
Vanessa sends Bodie a bunch of documents. Bodie reads the police interviews with three students and realizes that they all repeat what the others are saying. Bodie decides that Omar was convicted on student gossip.
Theory 6: Ari Did It
Ari Hutson, who murdered his girlfriend Barbara in the 1970s and was reputed to be hiding in the woods near Granby
Bodie sends the files from Vanessa to Yahav, who has thoughts. Mainly that it’s extremely difficult to vacate a conviction.
Mike calls Bodie and says that a lot of people had keys to the pool.
Yahav says the case against Omar had issues and that his lawyer was from Boston, an outsider.
Bodie feels that if she loses her podcast over Jerome’s cancellation, she might want to work on the Omar issue. She feels like the universe has brought her here. Eye roll.
Thalia’s sister Vanessa offers to show Bodie her sister’s planner.
Theory 7: Bloch’s wife Did It
Bodie borrows Fran’s car and drives to meet Vanessa in Lowell. Bodie decodes the period and sex codes in Thalia’s planner, because she taught Thalia how to record her period. She tells Vanessa about Denny Bloch. Vanessa says she visits Omar in prison every month.
Theory 8: Denny Bloch Did It
Bodie speculates that, based on the sex and period codes, Thalia might have told Denny she was pregnant as a way to pressure him to leave his wife. Thus, Bloch’s motive for murder.
While driving Bodie to the airport, Anne tells her that Fran really wants to protect the school. I am SOOO suspicious of Fran.
Bodie wonders about the Granby equipment shed as a possible crime scene. She messages Britt and Alder to look into that.
What Is the Ending of I Have Some Questions For You?
It’s March 2022 and Bodie is back in New Hampshire for a hearing about Omar’s retrial.
Here has what happened in the meantime:
In the four years since, Thalia’s case has become the topic of a podcast made by Brodie, Britt and Alder. Bodie never named Bloch by name in the podcast but did mention a male teacher with whom Thalia was “close”.
After Bodie texted Britt about the equipment room, Britt and her AP Chem class made luminol and found blood there.
Thalia’s family didn’t want to be part of any of re-investigating the case.
Bodie divorced Jerome and had another fling with Yahav.
Robbie is testifying in Omar’s hearing and a few random people think he did it.
At Omar’s hearing, the prosecution tries to suggest that Bodie invented this whole thing to take her mind off the Jerome’s Me Too scandal, which grew into a huge thing. So the prosecutions says that Bodie can’t mention Denny Bloch and her Me Too issues with him.
Dane Rubra shows up and Bodie decides to give him Bloch’s name and let him run with it.
Beth Docherty comes over and accuses Bodie of being an attention whore.
Dane puts a public call out for information on Dennis Bloch.
The racist former headmistress was the one who directed the police to Omar.
Bodie runs into Beth in the hotel gym. Beth says she could have told the police about Bloch if they asked. She says she fixed up Thalia with Robbie to get her away from Mr. Bloch.
Beth hates Bodie for setting this all in motion, because it drags up painful issues from her past. She tells a story about when Mike and Dorian set up a camera to film Dorian and Beth being intimate. Beth was (understandably) completely traumatized by this.
Geoff brought a suitcase of memorabilia and he and and Bodie go through it. In an old photo, they see what looks like blood spatter on the back of Robbie’s t-shirt. Bodie realizes that maybe Robbie did it.
Bodie meets with Mike and they discuss the night of Thalia’s death. Mike claims Robbie was going to meet Thalia at the mattresses in the woods but then said she went to the shed.
Britt and Bodie drive to find Beth, who has left New Hampshire with her husband and headed to Vermont. Beth is skeptical of the theory of Robbie as the killer but says he was abusive to her.
Theory 3 Revisited: Robbie Did It
Bodie admits maybe she was wrong about Mr. Bloch
Beth is recalled to the stand and testifies that Robbie could have been in the woods at 10 pm and that Thalia told Beth that Robbie assaulted her in the past. The defense theory is that Robbie found out that Thalia was sleeping with Bloch.
Some of the other victims of Bloch come forward.
Omar doesn’t get a new trial because there’s still not enough evidence that Robbie did it.
Fran and Bodie scatter their classmate Carlotta’s ashes at Granby. Bodie reflects on the timelessness of the New Hampshire plants woods.
Who is the Killer in I Have Some Questions For You?
Yes, after 450 pages, multiple suspects, a Dateline special, and a podcast, we don’t really get a solid resolution. Or any justice for Thalia.
Ultimately, the book suggests that Robbie is the one who did it, but that there’s not enough evidence to convict him OR to convince the court that Omar has been wrongfully convicted.
I was very tired by the end of the book, so if you disagree with me about ANYTHING or think I got something wrong, I’d love to hear it in comments.
Spoiler Discussion: I Have Some Questions For You.
Why Did Omar Get Convicted?
So this is the second fictional book I’ve read recently that casts a critical eye on the New Hampshire court system.
I Have Some Questions For You suggests that Omar got convicted because of a racist head of school, student gossip, and the fact that his very expensive lawyer was a city slicker and no one liked him.
Many people at the time believed Omar was sleeping with Thalia. Was he?
Or was it just gossip? Thalia isn’t around to say for sure. (Edited to add: though if you believe that Bodie knows how to interpret her planner, then she wasn’t sleeping with him.)
If I were Omar, and I had been sleeping with Thalia, I’d 100% deny it. Though it would explain the evidence on Thalia’s body that linked to him, hair and DNA.
Did the police investigate other suspects?
It doesn’t seem like they did. Did they really just railroad someone over gossip with no proof? I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts and this does sometimes happen. But did they really not consider the victim’s own boyfriend?
I did like that the book included Omar as a character, talking about his experiences in prison. But I think that the book’s insights about the criminal justice had much less of an impact for me because the book spent so much time on Mr. Bloch and Bodie.
What Actually Happened With Mr. Bloch?
The book’s title refers to Mr. Bloch and Brodie spends the whole book talking to him in her head. WHY?
I’m not really sure why this subplot was in the book except as a red herring.
WHY was Bodie so obsessed with Mr. Bloch?
One of my theories was that Bodie was also being groomed and abused by Mr. Bloch and that Bodie killed Thalia out of jealousy. Or, honestly, that Bodie was jealous of the attention Thalia was getting from Mr. Bloch and killed her. (Remember when someone – Beth? – tells Bodie that she wasn’t attractive enough as a teen to have Bloch interested in her.
If you read My Dark Vanessa, which was an unflinching account of a teacher-student relationship and the devastating impact it had on the life of the narrator, you might remember that the narrator was still jealous of her abusers’ later victims.
It doesn’t seem like Bodie and Mr. Bloch had any other relationship outside of the usual teacher student relationship. And she literally thinks he is Thalia’s murderer and has kept this to herself for decades.
Was I Have Some Questions for You really a Me Too book masquerading as a mystery?
The book spends a lot of time talking about misogyny and the harassment, grooming, and abuse of women. There’s Mr. Bloch, there’s Beth’s terrible story about being filmed, there’s Bodie’s assault in college, there’s Jerome and his cancellation.
For me, the Me Too themes seemed to overshadow the mystery.
Why was Brodie MORE bothered that her roommate had a thing with Bloch than that her roommate was murdered? And if Brodie really thought Mr. Bloch killed Thalia and, even worse, that an innocent man had been sitting in prison for years, why didn’t she say something?
Did you feel that the book’s points about misogyny, true crime, and the justice system were compelling and original?
Some reviewers on Goodreads were saying yes. But plenty of others were unimpressed.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s and it’s hard to explain to younger generations how all the Me Too stuff was thought of back then as something that women had no choice but to put up with.
I don’t think this is a stunning revelation, but I think the book did a good job of capturing the way things were back then and, by contrasting the 90s to Jerome’s cancellation for something similar to what Mr. Bloch did, how much has changed.
Also, I thought the book suggested that Omar was overly friendly with students, though that could have been gossip.
If Omar was sleeping with/flirting with/hooking up with students, he was also abusing his power. (Edited to add: Sara, in comments, says Thalia was definitely NOT sleeping with Omar. I am not of sure of the exact details of their relationship as Sara is. But I don’t think Omar killed her.)
One of the reasons I love listening to podcasts is seeing the way they construct narratives around a set of facts, and I think the best podcasts (like Serial S1) will make you see a case from a lot of different sides. I think that was what the book was trying to do for Thalia’s case.
I think the book did do a good job of humanizing Omar and showing how with a small amount of damning DNA evidence and a large amount of gossip, he ended up in prison.
What Was the overall aim of I Have Some Questions for You?
Maybe literary books aren’t supposed to have a point. They just have themes, like “what is truth?”
Call me old-fashioned, but I’m a believer in Chekov’s gun. If there is a murder in a story, solve it!
Or at least have the main character care about it. I mean, having your roommate be murdered during your senior year at high school right on campus seems to be a pretty traumatic event. But to me, Bodie seemed a bit blasé about the whole thing.
I read a review of the book on Goodreads that said, in part, that I Have Some Questions For You wouldn’t satisfy the “Girl on the Train airport book crowd.”
Which I guess means … me. So, yes you are right. This book is not satisfying as a mystery.
As I say in my review of I Have Some Questions For You, I found the first 250 pages or so VERY slow going. Bodie walks around the campus, seeming to think about each and every student in her class. Her family. The Mormon guy, who I also was side-eyeing hard. Why does he send her to boarding school and pay for it? Weird.
Despite all the thinking she does, I also found Bodie a very frustrating and not very self aware character. Which might be why I was pretty convinced SHE could be the murderer.
As I say in my review, I think that, through Bodie and the podcasting and film themes, the book is trying to make a point about narratives: who gets to construct them, whose narratives count and don’t count, and the real-life impact that narratives and labels can have. But … 450 pages?!?!?!?
I’d love to hear your ideas about the book, the ending, Brodie, Mr. Bloch — all of it!
I listened to it on Audible and some of the me too stuff at first didn’t make sense, where it was placed or how it was “read”. She was so spot on about how we behaved and were treated as women in the 90’s. Her high school years were one year off of mind. I didn’t go to boarding school but a large group of my friends did and this was one of the better books to describe that situation especially in a co-ed school.
I kind of figured Omar wasn’t going to get his fair trial but it did really make me mad at the end. The characters seemed so real because she gave us such detail.
I also get that she was a successful modern woman but I felt like she was always leaving her kids for a large amount of time on this. Playing with Fran’s kids, and her own kids were kind of an afterthought.
The trauma she lived through with Dorian and how Beth put up with that was awful, I can’t speak to now, but kids seem more aware, but in the 90’s things like this happened to girls all the time and you felt ashamed or embarrassed and no one spoke out, at least not in my friend groups.
Thoughts on the last few lines?
I agree with you! I think the most successful part of the book is the depiction of the casual, accepted harassment of young women at that time, from the bullying all the way to Mr. Bloch. And honestly, if Omar was sleeping with Thalia, he was guilty of that as well. It’s hard for people who weren’t teenagers or older during that time to understand how much of a non-issue this stuff was. Even student-teacher relationships. In my first job, one of my teenage co-workers was sleeping with the boss (who was probably in his late twenties) and all people gossiped about was how she got the best shifts.
To me, the murder “investigation” and depiction of true crime culture was much less successful.
I detested Bodie. She was so incredibly self-centered but maybe that was the point. But it didn’t make her someone whose head I wanted to be in for 450 pages. Maybe a multi-POV would have helped.
The ending … I don’t know. The woods are a huge symbolic thing in the book, from a place for Bodie to walk and reflect, to a place to party, to a possible murder scene, to a place to scatter ashes. To me, it felt a little like “human struggles are fleeting, but nature endures.” That’s a good book club question if I add those to the post!
What did you think about her obsession with Mr. Bloch? If she cared so much about his wrongdoing, why did she say nothing for so long? Was she jealous?
My main question is… in part 2 chapter 37 Bodie says, “there was a boy who was not charged with involuntary manslaughter for pushing his father off a restaurant deck-because the system worked for him as it should work for everyone. When they brought him in for questioning, they gave him a blanket and hot chocolate. They understood that he was a child.” This sounds very familiar and idk if it’s because this was said to have happened to a character in the book, perhaps Robbie?
Does this ring any bells to you?
It took me a couple weeks to finish this book, so it’s a fresh enough memory to have been from this book, but foggy enough to have been from a different book.
Hi Sarah and welcome! Isn’t that similar to the story Bodie told about her brother toward the beginning of the book? That he pushed their father off a porch or a deck, and as a result their father died? I feel like that was part of her family tragedy story. I didn’t take notes on that part because wow, this book was long, but I’m pretty sure that she talked about it and that must be what she’s referring to.
If anyone else has thoughts, please let us know!
She’s also saying that the young
BOY was treated as all children should be. Very differently from the 12 year old girl that was mentioned who had watched R rated movies and was found guilty. She showed many examples of misogyny throughout the narrative.
That was the story of Brodie’s brother pushing their dad off the deck.
Thanks, Sara – that is what I thought!
I am not sure if she was directly referring to her brother Ace or not. If not that seems eerily similar to the fact that Ace pushed his father off the back porch of the bar his father earned in an argument with a grill brush. When Bodie initially reveals this bit of family history she is very intentional in not assigning any history of violence or aggression to her brother. She make a point of saying that if her father had fallen an inch to the left of right, he would have been fine. She also oddly seems to blame the emergency responders for not coming soon enough because her brother doesn’t sound desperate or panicked enough on the phone. In general, Bodie seems to have trouble accepting the flaws of men who she loves…Ace, Mr. Bloch, Jerome and even Yahav. She seems to always find excuses for them. She defends Jerome. She says that Yahav is not really an adulterer becuase they were both seperated when they began their sexual relationship. And Mr. Bloch….she seems to keep protecting him although it seems obvious that he was having an inappropriate relationship with Thalia. While this makes sense when she was a teenager, why as a more evolved adult does she not really seem to be able to accept that he was a pedophile. All of this seems really incongrous with the fact that her podcast is supposedly about unearthing these narratives that normalize the violence against women.
Thanks for such an incredibly insightful comment. You are absolutely right.
I wonder if it was intentional on the author’s part to make her that much of a feminist hypocrite. I found her endlessly self-absorbed but I didn’t pick up on her defense of the men in her life.
My father-in-law had a saying: “we see our faults in others.” I do think that psychological projection is a fascinating thing. Maybe Bodie is subconsciously guilty for not calling out the men in her life so she does it on her podcast instead.
Omar did NOT sleep with Thalia. That was covered in the book. Thalia was sleeping with Robbie and Mr. Bloch.
Robbie killed Thalia.
I must confess to getting impatient with the first half of this book in which Bodie mopes around while telling us she thinks an innocent man is in prison. So thanks for wanting to talk facts.
When you say “covered in the book,” do you mean the codes in Thalia’s journal? I found that fairly convincing. But I also thought (and this could just be me) that one of the points of the book is that we all construct narratives, that we are all somewhat unreliable narrators, and that some people’s narratives carry more weight than others.
I do agree that Robbie killed Thalia.
Just found this forum. I, too, had some questions, but about this book. I listened to it through my public library and yes, it’s a very long “listen”. Fourteen + hours. I came here because I was sure I missed something when the book ended and there were no answers to any of the questions! Thanks for clearing it up. To be honest, I wanted to stop listening after the first 2 hours but try to stick with books I start simply because of FOMO. I wish I had listened to my inner voice. How very disappointing to invest this much time into a book (when I have dozens on my wish list) and be left with questions, like why didn’t the author just name the guilty person. Ugh. Lesson learned. Or not. I still don’t like to give up on a book.
Hi Nancy! I’m pretty sure the guilty person is Robbie, but ugh if an innocent person is in prison or a guilty person is walking free. And wow did that book take a long time to get to NO clear, definitive resolution.
I have to say, I was annoyed when I finished, but now, a few weeks later, I can try to appreciate what the book was trying to do. I just think way too much time was spent on Bodie thinking of her sad adolescence. Her narcissism was a bit off-putting!
I honestly could not finish this book. When I reached the 97th page, I was wondering, “What is this book even about? Is this going anywhere? Is Bodie just going to talk about her past the whole time?” I put the book down for the night and thought I would read until page 200 before I decide to keep going or not. The next day, I read 5 more pages and I couldn’t take it anymore. My to read list is so long, I don’t want to waste any more time on this meandering novel which definitely could have been a short story.
I am so happy that I stopped reading it after reading your summary. I seriously don’t get how this book was published. I would have thrown it out the window if I finished the whole thing and realized I spent all that time for such a boring ending.
I felt exactly the same when I (finally) finished it. Upon reflection, I do think the book was trying to say something important. But I agree, it was too long. Bodie was such a weird narrator: completely self-obsessed with zero self-awareness.
I think if the book had been written with a multi-POV narrative it would have been so much better. A POV from Thalia, from Bloch, from Beth, from Robbie would have worked so much better. The book’s structure was just Bodie whining about how much being a teenager sucked for 300 pages and then a big info dump at the end.
Totally agree with the comments that this was too long and convoluted with too many side plots. My question – thats driving me crazy – is what was chapter 40 in part 2 about. “That was her bank card in Kansas City but that wasn’t her on the security footage…that was her blood in the bathroom. That was her hair in the attic.” What is this part talking about? It’s right before she spreads Carlotta’s ashes but it doesn’t seem related to that.
Hi Megan – I don’t have the book anymore so hope someone else can chime in.
I feel like the Kansas City thing is just another of Bodie’s interludes about true crime cases and doesn’t have any relevance beyond that but I could be wrong. Next time I’m in a bookstore I’ll take a peek and see.
Part II Chapter 40 – who are they talking about???
Hang tight getting a copy of the book to answer these questions!
Thank you SO much for writing this. Reading this book started to feel like homework at only page 50, so I didn’t want to keep reading but I also wanted to know who killed Thalia. I can’t believe the author never answers that question!!!! I’m so grateful I didn’t waste more time on this book only to discover that.
Well, she DOES decide who killed Thalia … eventually.
But it takes a very very long time to get to the likely answer and we have to hear a lot about Bodie’s teenage years which end up having nothing to do with the story. And a lot about her obsession with Mr. Bloch. All while a probably innocent man sits in prison.
So if you are looking for a book with definitive answers and justice served, this isn’t the one!
Your review is spot on. Too slow. Not a good wrap up. Did not build anticipation. One more thing … I don’t want politics inserted.
Based on the topic of her last book (the AIDS crisis in the 1980s) I expected a political slant and I was okay with it.
I understand that some people don’t want politics in a book, and I respect that. I also don’t want this discussion to get into politics, so I have slightly amended your comment.
The politics wasn’t the problem for me. The problem for me was that I genuinely found it very hard to like Bodie as a character. While she sees herself as soembody who is doind the morally right thing and fighting social injustices, she literally does nothing about Omar serving all this time in jail for a crime that she knows he did not commit. She never brings it up to anybody and she as a famous podcaster has the perfect platform to raise awareness that basically he is victim of a white privelege. As a black male in a very rich, white world, he is the easy scapegoat.