Book Review: ‘I Have Some Questions for You’ by Rebecca Makkai
I was feeling really enthusiastic about this when we added it to our line-up for Season 7 of ‘The Dark Academicals’, and even more so when Sarah started it before me and was really enjoying it, but it sadly didn’t work for me.
You can listen to the full episode here:
I don’t read many thrillers, but the synopsis really spoke to me.
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 1995 murder of a classmate, Thalia Keith. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia's death and the conviction of the school's athletics coach, Omar Evans, are the subject of intense fascination online, Bodie prefers-needs-to let sleeping dogs lie.
But when The Granby School invites her back to teach a two-week course, Bodie finds herself 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.
One of the most acclaimed contemporary American writers, Rebecca Makkai reinvents herself with each of her brilliant novels. Both a transfixing mystery and a deeply felt examination of one woman's reckoning with her past, I Have Some Questions for You is her finest achievement yet.
With a podcast element, a mysterious death from 20 years ago, and a boarding school, it should have been right up my street, but I struggled with it from the off.
To start with, at just shy of 500 pages, it was far too long, and it showed in the pace for me and I struggled to get through it. Even knowing I had a deadline to read ‘I Have Some Questions for You’ didn’t make much difference (sorry, Sarah…) and I had to force myself to even listen to the audiobook. For such a long book I at least expected to really connect with Bodie and the rest of the characters, but I didn’t - there was nothing for me to grab onto.
There were a lot of issues broached: social media, cancel culture, the Me Too movement, student-teacher relationships and criticisms of the American criminal justice and prison systems - there was a lot going on. Too much going on, I think. These are big issues and even with the page count, there’s just too much for each element to be given full justice.
I ended up giving ‘I Have Some Question for You’ two stars because it really disappointed me and tried to do too much.
Written by Sophie
