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A review by reneedecoskey
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Early front runner for my favorite book of the year. This was my first free weekend since I can’t even remember and the last one for the foreseeable future. So I spent it finishing I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai.
On the surface, this book is about a 1995 murder at Granby, a boarding school tucked into the New Hampshire woods. Senior Thalia Keith is found floating in the swimming pool, her head cracked open. The school athletic trainer, a black man named Omar, is arrested and charged with Thalia’s murder. Eventually he confesses, but then recants the next day, claiming it was coerced. But the jury found him guilty anyway.
More than 2 decades later, Bodie Kane, a podcaster and Granby alum who was roommates with Thalia junior year, returns to her alma mater to teach a winter “mini-mester” on podcasting.
Being back at Granby has made her feel like a ghost seeing ghosts. But when one of her students decides to investigate Thalia’s murder for her podcast, Bodie becomes completely immersed in the past. Like her student, she doesn’t believe Omar actually killed Thalia, but she thinks she knows who did.
Beneath the surface, though, this book offers commentary on systemic racism in the law enforcement and judicial systems. Even more than that, it underscores the ways in which women are often abused, assaulted, and even murdered over a man’s slight inconvenience. She lists dozens of examples throughout the book. Some you can pick up right away.
It highlights how easy it is for white men to evade the system or not feel its full effects because we live in a patriarchal society (if you need an example of how that works in today’s world, please read Chanel Miller’s book Know My Name about what happened when she was SA’d by Brock Turner). And how women suffer at the hands of these men and their entitlement. All the murdered girls start to blend together.
The book is compulsively readable, which is good because it’s almost 500 pages. It moves quickly though, especially with some very short chapters. The ending is perhaps not tidy, but it is realistic. Note that this is more literary fiction than it is thriller/mystery. Worth the hype. 5/5
On the surface, this book is about a 1995 murder at Granby, a boarding school tucked into the New Hampshire woods. Senior Thalia Keith is found floating in the swimming pool, her head cracked open. The school athletic trainer, a black man named Omar, is arrested and charged with Thalia’s murder. Eventually he confesses, but then recants the next day, claiming it was coerced. But the jury found him guilty anyway.
More than 2 decades later, Bodie Kane, a podcaster and Granby alum who was roommates with Thalia junior year, returns to her alma mater to teach a winter “mini-mester” on podcasting.
Being back at Granby has made her feel like a ghost seeing ghosts. But when one of her students decides to investigate Thalia’s murder for her podcast, Bodie becomes completely immersed in the past. Like her student, she doesn’t believe Omar actually killed Thalia, but she thinks she knows who did.
Beneath the surface, though, this book offers commentary on systemic racism in the law enforcement and judicial systems. Even more than that, it underscores the ways in which women are often abused, assaulted, and even murdered over a man’s slight inconvenience. She lists dozens of examples throughout the book. Some you can pick up right away.
It highlights how easy it is for white men to evade the system or not feel its full effects because we live in a patriarchal society (if you need an example of how that works in today’s world, please read Chanel Miller’s book Know My Name about what happened when she was SA’d by Brock Turner). And how women suffer at the hands of these men and their entitlement. All the murdered girls start to blend together.
The book is compulsively readable, which is good because it’s almost 500 pages. It moves quickly though, especially with some very short chapters. The ending is perhaps not tidy, but it is realistic. Note that this is more literary fiction than it is thriller/mystery. Worth the hype. 5/5