My first read of the year was a doozy! A bit of true crime, dark academia, and coming to terms with your childhood. Bodie returns to a New Hampshire boarding school she attended as a teen. During her time there, her roommate was murdered, but Bodie thinks the wrong man was imprisoned. This worked so well because of the writing, which was personal and intimate because they are letters to a third person. Also, we're seeing this happen through the eyes of a 40-year-old woman, so there's a maturity and distance that most boarding school murder books don't have. There's a running piece of the book where she theorizes how different suspects would have committed the murder. The author brings in references to many different real life cases where women are murdered or assaulted and justice wasn't served. Honestly, I couldn't put this down. I loved that Bodie was so flawed and she was dealing with her own marriage and normal life issues in addition to the main plot. It felt more realistic. And feeling anger at other examples was so relevant. After being disappointed in Great Believers, I was surprised by how much I loved this one. It runs a bit long in parts and loses some momentum when the trial starts, but it's worth it. ( )

A dark academia mystery in which a prep school alumna goes back to teach podcasting years after graduating there and becomes obsessed all over again with the unsolved murder of her school roommate their senior year.

A pretty good mystery with some solid twists. Recommended if you like that sort of thing. ( )

I Have Some Questions For You is by award winning author, Rebecca Makkai. When I read the description of the subject matter of the book, I knew I would enjoy reading it. The story takes place at a boarding school. Bodie was a former student and returned ~20 years later to teach for a 2-week winter break course. When she was a student, a classmate, Thalia was murdered and a suspect, Omar was quickly tagged as the killer. Bodie has had doubts all of these years if the right person was actually convicted since many of the facts do not add up and her intuition is pointing to someone else. The book’s main story is about trying to piece the facts together and, if possible, point to the real killer.

Having attended boarding school myself, I could see that Rebecca Makkai is very familiar with the common culture and behaviors (aside from murder) that make up the daily life for those living on campus. She, in fact, attended boarding school and later returned to live on campus along with her husband who took a teaching job at the same boarding school that she attended. However, the book is about an entirely different fictitious school but the common culture sounds very familiar.

Makkai is a master storyteller. She easily transitions from the present day to the past and even has Bodie having a one-sided conversation in her head with the person who she thinks is responsible for the murder. She also develops many subplots and character development that weave in and out throughout the book.

One thing that I found chilling was that Makkai mentions several other real cases that are in all of our shared knowledge of violence against women. Seeing the distinguishing facts surrounding real cases show how common this is and nothing really changes. There is a lot of messaging here that is very insightful about our culture in general.

I don’t want to go into the subplots or themes since I think that would become spoilers.

This book is a page turner and holds your interest until the very end. I would highly recommend this book. ( )

3.5 I'm rounding up for all the little quips about women and how they are stalked, hurt, tortured, murdered or not believed. I loved those little parts of paragraphs and sections, just small, powerful statements.

But the story - it was very good even though it was a little. . .long. I liked Bodie. I like that she had to grapple with who she was. Her instinct was "believe the woman" but then, was she consistent? I love that she struggled even if she meddled.

Thalia's story was heartbreaking because it was guesswork. No one knew all of Thalia's secrets. So when she was found dead and then presumed murdered, the small boarding school Bodie went to was rattled but not broken. They all pointed fingers at the one guy - the 'not a teacher' and 'not a student' - the trainer/physical therapist for their sports program. They all rushed to judge the 'outsider' to make it easier to sleep at night. They didn't have to worry, it wasn't someone that was really one of 'them'.

But now it's been years and Bodie is really starting to question what happened. She's back at this small private school to teach a small 'mini' class - a podcast class. And some kids pick the murder that happened right there on campus to investigate and cover. And they start to dig through all statements and get a fresh eye on the case. And they just might figure out who actually did it.

I was hooked but the story did take me a long time to get through. I loved the Podcast part of it and how it was both a blessing and a curse. I liked how much Bodie had to analyze her own bias, interpretations and ideas - how she had to struggle with what she knew and what she assumed. It's a slower story but I was hooked and wanted to know if they'd solve it. This one definitely worked for me, I'll look for more from this author! ( )

Still have some questions, but really enjoyed the story overall. Narration was great. I loved the look at different suspects and the authors use of first person narrative. ( )

In "I Have Some Questions for You," by Rebecca Makkai, Bodie Kane is a graduate of Granby, a boarding school in New Hampshire that she attended in her teens. The story centers on the tragic fate of Thalia Keith, a seventeen-year-old Granby senior who, in 1995, was killed on the school grounds and subsequently tossed into a swimming pool. Serving a lengthy sentence for the crime is Omar Evans, a Black athletic trainer who was employed at Granby. Omar claims that police interrogators used coercive tactics to elicit a confession from him that he quickly recanted.

Forty-year-old Bodie, a writer and podcaster, returns to Granby to teach two classes. She believes that the authorities should have focused more on a married music instructor, Dennis Bloch, who may have had an intimate relationship with Thalia. One problem with this novel is that Bodie is an irritating, nosy, and unlikeable narrator. Makkai includes numerous flashbacks that reveal details of Bodie's tragic childhood; fraught adolescence; and obsession with the circumstances surrounding Thalia's death.

Makkai, through Bodie, makes a point about the power imbalance that allows older men to exploit vulnerable and naïve young women. She also shows how difficult it is to get to make sense of complex situations. This dark tale drags on as Bodie and others dig into the past to figure out if Omar was indeed guilty or if the real culprit got away with murder. The author wraps things up with a disturbing conclusion that raises provocative questions about the fairness of America's criminal justice system.
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As an adult, Bodie looks back on her relationship with a favorite and charismatic male teacher at her New England prep school. Her narrative is addressed to him, prompted by her return to the school to teach a seminar on podcasting, for which she is well-known. One of her classmates has been murdered, and with her adult awareness of male abuse and the me-too movement, she wonders about the role of the former teacher in the victim's death. ( )

1.5

I would have DNFd @25pages but I struggled through as it’s my bookclub book
This was padded with a ton of superfluous details and did not need to be so ridiculously long.
The main character is unlikeable (also not a fan of true crime podcast).
The ending is unsatisfying, and the author tries to make meaningful commentary on social issues but comes off surface level & cringe.
Did not enjoy a single thing about this. ( )

I remember what I remember remembering.
p316

Set in the present day where the #metoo campaign is front and centre and frequent media discussions around violence agaist women take place, Makkai takes on a murder of a girl in a boarding school and explores the issues it raises years later.

The story is tod by Bodie, an ex-pupil of the school and room-mate of Thalia who was murdered. One night at the end of a school performance she doesn't attend the party in the woods and eventually, her body is found and Omar, a coach at the school, is charged, tried and found guilty. But there have always been questions about whether Omar is guilty and Bodie, who is now an acclaimed podcaster, manipulates students into trying to find a different solution to the case.

There is so much going on in this story but what Makkai does very well is show that transition from child to young adult well: the humiliations, the pairing off, being left on the outside and then years later discovering that everyone felt this way. A significant proportion of the book is about memory, what we remember and how we remember it alongside the power of group think. This was a group of students who put two and two together and made five or more. It focused on how gossip became fact with no one questioning what was being said or assumed. It also highlighted how useless the police can be and how misdirected they are when they make assumptions.

What I didn't understand fully was the role of the sub-plot where Bodie's husband, Jerome, was accused by a younger woman of of abusing her. She was old enough and agreed that the sex was consensual but felt that the power balance was all in Jerome's favour and that he took advantage of the situation. The artist made a video work of art talking about the relationship and her feelings now which trended online. Twitter in all of this mayhem was completely involved. The accusations doesn't seem to go anywhere and is not integral to the story.

The book raised issues about the nature of true crime and the use of citizen detectives and the value of podcasting which ended up being a force for good.

A powerful story which was a bit slow in parts. ( )

Finished the newest Rachel Makkai book called I Have Some Questions for You.
I've read and enjoyed two other books by RM, one a charming YA novel about it a librarian and her favorite student, the other an accomplished narrative of historical fiction depicting the years of the AIDS crisis in America. It appears she has taken in a new genre with this somewhat classic Donna Tart- like boarding school whodunit.
The story is narrated by Bodie Kane who return to Grady, a boarding school for wealthy, intelligent kids. Bodie is returning to teach a winter session course on podcasting and film history. To those who knew her as the intimidating goth like 15 year old, her current notoriety is a bit surprising. "The need to keep busy is both a symptom of high-functioning anxiety and the key to my success. My podcast at the time was Starlet Fever, a serial history of women in film—the ways the industry chewed them up and spat them out."
Returning to the campus also has her returning to the biggest event in her life, the murder of her roommate Thalia Keith and the rushed prosecution of the black athletic trainer, Omar Evans. Makkai interjects his experiences in prison as well, including a near fatal stabbing.
One of the highlights of the writing style is her choice to have her narrator write this account to her former drama teacher who she believes is the real killer. At times she also dedicates sections to several others who may have been responsible, including Thalia's boyfriend Robbie, her catty girlfriends who were jealous of her, and even the narrator herself.
The story is definitely propelling and leads to a satisfying conclusion with plenty of commentary about the state of the world prior to the Me-Too movement. I enjoyed the novel and will continue look forward to her work.

Lines
One photo—her laughing with her mouth but not her eyes, suggesting some deep unhappiness—tends to feature in clickbait.

Yahav was skittish and unpredictable, a handsome Israeli bunny rabbit, equally likely to drive straight here as to vanish into the woods forever.

Then, out of nowhere, came Thalia Keith. (Theme music! Follow spot! All heads turn.) Black curls down her back, clear olive skin, eyes people reverently described as aqua. Flat-chested, which helped explain why rather than killing her on sight, a high-status group of junior girls instantly adopted her.

The dosage of my antidepressant is such that I haven’t cried actual tears in a decade, but there are times when I want so badly to cry that I make all the noises of crying, press my fists into my eyes so I feel something similar.

The actual statistic, if you care, is that worldwide, 38.6 percent of murdered women are killed by intimate partners. In some countries that’s much higher.

In Anne’s car, NPR was still going. It was the one where they found green synthetic fibers between her teeth. It was the one where her shoes were gone. The one where her bike was gone. The one where her fingernails were gone, broken in the fight. ( )

This feels like a long book, a long haul which I only intermittently enjoyed. Bodie Kane, film professor and podcaster returns to the privileged boarding school where she was a scholarship pupil. She finds herself, together with a couple of the pupils in her group returning to investigate the death of her former room mate which occurred when she was a student there. The three of them are sure the wrong man was incarcerated for the crime, and Bodie has her own ideas. There's a long cast list here which I found hard to keep track of. Though there's plenty to make you think here - about power, about class, about sex and violence and about letting sleeping dogs lie - the whole book felt longer than it needed to be. Oddly, what I mainly got from this book was some idea of the American boarding school system: though as my understanding of its English equivalent is shaky, to say the least, I'm not sure how relevant this is to me. ( )

There is a lot to think about after reading this book. I can clearly see what the author is trying to do... she wants us to contemplate all the news stories about the abuse and murder of women, which has become so common that we are almost immune to the horror. She does this by repeating anonymous stories as a litany...
"That was her flip-flop beside the van. That was her comb in the ravine. That was her bank card at the ATM in Kansas, but that wasn't heron the security footage....That was her phone, tossed off the overpass. That was her blood in the bathroom. That was her hair in the attic. We're lucky to find this much. That was her laundry, still in the dryer. This was her body, but she's long gone." (p. 431)

Bodie is trying to solve the murder of her high school roommate, because she believes that the man serving time for the murder was wrongfully convicted. She returns to her high school and get her podcast students interested in the case. The book is written as a stream of consciousness letter to her one-time hero (or crush?), her music teacher Mr. Bloch.

Unfortunately, Bodie is written as a feminist #Metoo/Social Justice Warrior, but comes off as an unhappy, manipulative middle-aged woman who cannot get over being an outsider during her high school years. As she struggles to gain adult perspective, her whiny pining over the once hot high school dudes, her longing for acceptance by the in-crowd can sometimes be a little sad and pathetic.

"When someone asks me if I liked boarding school, I can no longer base my answer, by judgement, on the people I knew. Once, I might have thought of you. I might have thought of any number of people who weren't what I once believed. But I can still love the place itself... this was a place where someone could claim a small corner, a place where, by the end of four years, I'd be able to say I was part of something. Somewhere on campus, I'd find a place to leave a piece of myself. I was here. I was here." p. 422

5 stars for the plot
2 stars for the main character
3 stars total ( )

A mystery that becomes a meditation on men's assaults on women. I loved it! ( )

Thanks to Netgalley for the arc!

Unfortunate DNF for me, I really enjoyed the concept but it didn't draw me in, despite multiple attempts. Maybe it was the writing style, or maybe I have too much going on to focus on it currently. May come back to later!


UPDATE:

Tried again (this time with audio, thank you Julia Whelan for always drawing me in) and I really enjoyed it this time! Great perspective, characters, settings. It felt like a pretty realistic depiction of how this justice system works. Glad I found my way back to it

A girl died during Bodie's senior year at boarding school. Thalia was Bodie's former roommate, but not a particular friend. When Omar, a staffer in the PE department, is charged with Thalia's murder, the case is closed and everyone moves on . . . mostly. When Bodie returns to the school 20+ years later to teach seminars on podcasting and film studies, a student chooses the murder as the topic of her podcast, and being back on campus is stirring up all sorts of memories and doubts in Bodie's mind. Was the wrong man convicted of the crime? When new evidence surfaces, Bodie is drawn more and more into the case, and she has some questions.

I've seen a range of opinions on this book, so I approached it with caution and . . . I liked it! There aren't many really likeable characters in this book, and certainly Bodie struck me as both unsympathetic and unreliable in her narration. We never get outside of Bodie's perspective, and she clearly has an agenda of her own. I kept waiting for a plot twist that would reveal that the whole thing was in her head, but it's more complex than that. If you go into this book looking for relatable characters, or if you go in expecting a typical mystery/thriller, you might be disappointed. However, I found much to think about here. ( )

A podcast explores the question of if a man who has served more than 20 years in prison for the murder of a young woman could have been wrongfully convicted. The author doesn't give an easy answer but instead adds layers of complication to this question in this story. Bodie Kane, is the producer of a podcast that talks about Hollywood starlets. She has been invited back to Granby, the New Hampshire boarding school that she graduated from in 1995, to teach a course on podcasting during the two-week “mini-mester” in January 2018. One of the topics Bodie suggests to her students is the murder of her classmate Thalia Keith, which occurred in the spring of their senior year on the night of the school musical. A black man who worked for the school as an athletic trainer was convicted and imprisoned for the murder of the white girl...Thalia, however, doubts have reignited interest in the case, including a 2005 episode of "Dateline", and a website promoting the views that the boyfriend did it on "robbieserenhoisguilty.com". As Bodie works with her high schoolers to investigate, a major "#MeToo" a scandal breaks out in her own life, and it involves her partner, a well-known visual artist. Her return to Granby forces her to confront her troubled years of her younger self and the ways her disastrous childhood affected her aa well as her connection to a teacher who was if anything, a predator... and may even have been the murderer. The story is filled with lists of references to familiar crimes... particularly to one highlighting where something similar to Thalia's happened. The author places the fictional murder in the context of violence against women and an obsession with true crime. The impact of the story is totally one of emotions brought up by the topics bordering on outrage and anger rather than grief or sorrow. It seems that the readers are not meant to fall in love with Bodie or even like her much. She does come across as a bit cold, but perhaps this is because the whole narrative is addressed to a person, she seems to be furious with. Overall...there are no easy answers given in this story, which is particularly what I liked most about it. We all know that there are no easy answers in reality even if we might wish sometimes there was. ( )

This was a real challenge for me from beginning to end. I can't say that I was thrilled to read this book, even though I managed to slowly proceed through it. I was not inspired to flip the pages, and I wished the story had been more interesting. I persisted because I don't give up easily and was curious to find out what really happened before the murder and if justice would be served in the end. Unfortunately, the second-person narration didn't exactly work for this particular story, and I frequently felt like the prose was wandering.

I can say that, without giving too much away, I was quite impressed by how true to reality the novel was. Even though we always want our books to have poetic justice and perfect endings, this one chose a conclusion that, although not perfect, may be more realistic than what actually happens. That having been said, I cannot recommend this novel, as I felt it had too many flaws. ( )

Mixed feelings. The book was most certainly too long. The #metoo themes seemed sometimes didactic, sometimes muddled. I didn't agree with the characters who seemed to think they had the right to destroy other peoples' lives through social media and podcasts based solely on suspicions, even if they are right. Would have liked to see some exploration of the revictimization of subjects of true-crime podcasts as well. ( )

Het duurde lang voordat dit boek me ging aanspreken en toen werd het echt goed en spannend. Terugblik op een moord in de jaren negentig met de kennis en de blik van nu. Grensoverschrijdend gedrag en machtsongelijkheid spelen een belangrijke rol. Nadeel: erg veel personen, lastig uit elkaar te houden. ( )

This book didn’t land for everyone. At first, I thought it was not for me either. The title was a bit off-putting, being too wordy and awkward. However, when it showed up in the text near the end, I felt like it pretty much summarized the whole plot. Since -Questions- had a lot of buzzy marketing, most are familiar with the dark academia setting and the podcast trope, but the book exceeded those descriptions because the writing was so literary. I didn’t feel this fully measured up to The Great Believers, but it was a solid 4-star experience. If you like boarding school settings with a mysterious murder thrown in by way of a look back, this is one to pick up. ( )

If you'd like to be depressed and cynical, definitely read this book. It was aaaallll over the place as far as the plot. It felt scattered and preachy and almost obsessive and objectifying. It was an odd book. ( )

Somewhat muddled take on post-"me too" culture, true crime podcasts, false convictions and rush to judgment, social media madness, and a lot of other stuff thrown in. Probably 50 to 75 pages too long, with both the set-up and denouement drawn out way beyond what is necessary. The murder mystery is central to the story, and when the author veers away from that, we lose a lot of momentum. The main character, podcaster Bodie Kane (yeah, right), stumbles backwards 20 years into her past when she is invited to teach a 2-week class at her old boarding school, a place she both loved and hated. In her senior year there, her former roommate was found murdered. Thus launches Bodie's growing obsession that the wrong person (the school's athletic trainer) was _targeted -- accused, tried, convicted, and given a life sentence. Why was nobody else ever seriously considered? Maybe one of the podcast students will take up an investigation...

That's our premise here, and the author does do a decent job of drawing us into the questions at the heart of the case. Some of the writing is also quite good, but on the whole, this is not a book I would recommend to anyone.










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I couldn‘t put down this story of high school misfit Bodie Kane returning to her boarding school alma mater as a teacher. As Bodie reflects on her time at school and finds herself re-investigating a classmate‘s murder, Makkai adroitly plumbs the depths of traumas big and small. I was captured by the mystery but it‘s the deep dive into violence against women, validity of trauma, cancel culture, and justice system bias that will stick with me. ( )

What a bloated, self-indulgent mess of a book.

I understand that Ms. Makkai has a lot of legitimate beefs with the state of the world - several of which I share (in particular, the state with which women are treated as true crime entertainment) but a nonfiction set of essays would have been more enjoyable. Attempting to cram all of her grievances in a tissue-thin plot about podcasts and prep schools (that sounds good good on the surface!) was just silly.

I spent an entire Christmas Day reading this and I feel exhausted by the unlikeable characters and rambling, rambling plot. Must remember to read more Jenny Colgan on Christmas. ( )

Beautifully written. I look forward to reading other books by Makkai. ( )