I Have Some Questions for You: A Novel

by Rebecca Makkai

Hardcover, 2023

Call number

FIC MAK

Publication

Viking (2023), 448 pages

Description

"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 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? s 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."--Publisher marketing.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce
This novel explores all the ways women are casually damaged or killed by men with no repercussions for the men. It also explores how men are damaged by false or misguided accusations by women. Should a man be "Me Too"d for a bad date (I'm thinking Aziz Ansari though he isn't mentioned) or for being
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an inconsiderate lover? At one point someone states we shouldn't act on rumor and a character replies that rumor is sometimes all women have to warn them about bad men. Is it bad for white women to sweep in and try to save black men even if no one else is doing it? It raises many questions in a story that gets better as it goes along. I'm going to recommend it to my book club. It should make for great discussions.
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LibraryThing member japaul22
I loved this new book by [[Rebecca Makkai]]. It is a boarding school mystery, with the 45 year old woman narrator returning to her boarding school and reinvestigating the murder of a girl there in the 1990s, while she was in school. While the mystery is fairly straight ahead, Makkai makes more of
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it by solidly placing the murder in the 1990s and the investigation in the 2020s.

Makkai is incredible at creating a strong setting. I felt like I was this woman narrator, Bodie, since I'm the exact age that she is. Her retelling of her teenage years in the 1990s, as the last of the Gen Xers before the Millenials took over, is spot on. And then how she works in the modern day, taking how we got here from the 90s into account was astute. She weaves in the #metoo movement without naming it, having Bodie awaken to how what girls accepted as boy behavior that they were expected to put up with in the 1990s set up the current 2020s movement as women more widely begin to say "no more".

Makkai repeats certain phrases/ideas, weaving them into the story, such as the expectation in her teen years that boys deserved to be noticed and watched and idolized by the girls. I certainly remember that. And in Bodie's adult years, being constantly asked by both men and women "who's watching your kids?" as she travels, something I've also experienced as a mother. The answer for myself, as well as Bodie, being "their father" (and why don't you ever ask fathers that?).

This book is a great mix of a readable, engaging mystery and a subtle look at our culture - how we treat women, how the justice system works and doesn't work, and how our recent past has influenced our current times.
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LibraryThing member Hccpsk
Although a fan from 2014’s The Hundred Year House, with I Have Some Questions For You, Rebecca Makkai just leaped into a top-three favorite author of mine. In 2017, Bodie Kane returns to her alma mater, The Granby School, to teach two-week mini classes to the current crop of boarding school
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students. While there, she revisits the murder of one of her classmates senior year which starts a domino effect. Through this basic plot, Makkai uses a very interesting structure and excellent writing to deeply explore sexism and the #metoo movement while also crafting a murder mystery, a legal drama, and a very well-drawn, complex main character. She also completely nails the boarding school world — both now and Bodie’s flashbacks to her time there in the 1990s. I’d been looking forward to this book since I first heard about its release and it did not disappoint; a definite must-read for Makkai fans, literary fiction readers, murder mystery readers, and anyone who wants to be immersed in a great novel.
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LibraryThing member Carol420
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
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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.
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LibraryThing member nivramkoorb
This is the 2nd novel I have read by Makkai and this book is excellent. I would have given it 5 stars but it had a slow beginning but it built and delivered a powerful well crafted story. Bodie the first person narrator of the story is a podcaster and teacher of film history living in L.A. The book
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begins(2018) with her going back to Granby, the boarding school that she attended in the mid 90's to teach a two week seminar on podcasting and film history. Going back allows her to deal with her mixed feelings about her Granby experience. Most important was the 1995(her senior year) murder(assault and drowning) of her roommate of her sophomore and junior years, Thalia Keith. The murder investigation resulted in the arrest and conviction of the black athletic trainer Omar who was serving a prison sentence for the murder. Bodie has misgivings about how the investigation was done as do others out the world of social media. Bodie uses her podcast students who want to work on the murder to look into what really happened the night of the murder. Makkai is juggling a lot balls in the book including racial prejudice, our problematic judicial system, elitist white boarding schools, a troubled childhood, social media, the me too movement, and her personal relationship with her husband, lover, friends etc. Rather then crumble beneath the weight of all these issues, Makkai does a great job of integrating everything and holding our interest with the main story about the murder of Thalia Keith. I especially like that she didn't go for the easy solution and happy ever after ending but presented us with a realistic picture of what goes on in our form of justice. I strongly recommend this book and her previous novel "The Great Believers'" which was nominated for both the Pulitzer and National Book Awards. I do. intend to go back and read her earlier works.
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LibraryThing member EBT1002
Bodie returns to her New England high school prep school two decades later to teach a 2-week "mini-mester" course on podcasting. She quickly becomes obsessed with the murder, during her senior year, of Thalia, her former roommate and acquaintance. Omar, an athletic trainer who was neither student
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nor faculty, and who also happened to be Black, was arrested and convicted of the murder, but Bodie becomes more and more convinced that he did not do it. The narrative takes the form of a letter (?) from Bodie to Mr. Bloch, her music teacher at Granby, and includes speculation about his possible guilt. Regardless of his guilt or innocence with regard to murder, it's clear he was guilty of inappropriate relationships with young women students, including Thalia. Bodie and the students in her class investigate the old murder as part of the process of learning about podcast production. So many questions emerge, not only about Mr. Bloch, but about some of the boys in their class.

This is a #MeToo novel which also explores race, memory, justice, and the nuances of guilt. Even in its indictment of male privilege and the persistent and apparently unshakeable systemic protection of male predatory behavior, it also explores the nuance of guilt and responsibility. If a good man is accused of making a woman feel shamed, silenced, and abused, how do we balance the need to believe with our understanding of the complex dynamics of interpersonal relationships, especially if we happen to love and trust that man? How do we make sense of the cultural shifts that redefine acceptable and change our perspectives on fairness and justice?

The second half of the novel read much more quickly than the first, mostly because the story had shifted into whodunit territory. Sort of. And Makkai almost tried to tackle too many themes. She managed not to overdo any of them. 4.5 stars.
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LibraryThing member refice
I Have Some Questions for You was pretty good, but several of Makkai’s storytelling style choices diminished my reading pleasure.

The plot is of a woman, Bodie Kane, who returns to her boarding school alma mater to teach a short “mini-mester” class on podcasting. A couple of students choose
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the topic of a murdered student 20+ years prior while Bodie herself was a student. Even though a suspect was convicted, Bodie has had reservations about his guilt. As the students investigate under Bodie’s guidance, more likely suspects emerge. Ultimately, their goal becomes getting the original conviction overturned so new facts can surface publicly.

My biggest objection is the number of characters Makkai introduces early on. Many of these characters are there simply to provide context for what it is like to attend an elite boarding school. However, an equal number are critically important later on. For me, keeping track of who was who was confusing.

Makkai occasionally invoked a second person “you” with no indication as to why. I’d suddenly encounter a “you said…” or “you did…”, and I’d find myself searching through the previous few paragraphs to find out what I’d missed and whom she was talking to. I finally figured out her “you” was directed at a specific imagined new suspect, who, by the way, was one of the many, many random characters from early chapters.

A third technique I found distracting was of a sort of “stream of consciousness” cataloguing of what Bodie was listening to on the radio, or watching on TV, or reading. She’d start with “It was the one about…” with a short description of the topic. Then the next eight or ten sentences started with “Or, it was the one about….” I haven’t figured out what Makkai was trying to accomplish with this formula.

The book is long, but the story is engaging. Avid mystery readers will probably enjoy it.
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LibraryThing member sblock
I suspect people have strong opinions about this, which would make it a good book club selection. I'm still deciding how I feel about it but was a great read in any event. Makkei is brilliant at capturing a particular point in time.
LibraryThing member pgchuis
Apart from sagging slightly in the middle, I found this gripping and thought-provoking. I liked the voice of the narrator Bodie, and the writing was very good. I particularly appreciated the references to stories where women have not been believed, or have been expected to apologise to their
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abuser, or have been the only one to suffer consequences.

The ending was satisfactory but also disappointing.
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LibraryThing member dwcofer
When I heard about this book, I was excited to read it. The idea for the book sounded great, however, the execution by author Makkai, fell short. I was terribly disappointed in the story. The story was not engaging and never pulled me in.

The book is way too long, at over 400 pages. It would have
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been a much better book if 100 or more pages had been cut. There were also too many characters, most were secondary characters, never to appear again. This made keeping up with the characters very difficult.

The story’s narrative is convoluted and confusing. The dialogue was unoriginal and confusing with multiple characters speaking with no dialogue tags to identify the speaker. The characters were flat and poorly developed. At the end of the book, I did not feel like I knew any of the characters any better than I did at the beginning. None of the characters.

Bodie, the protagonist, was a horrible and despicable person. She was willing to frame Robbie, an innocent man with a wife and children, so the guilty man (Omar) would go free. There was no evidence against Robbie, only suspicions in Bodie’s mind. However, there was a massive amount of evidence against Omar, who was convicted of the murder. His DNA was found on the deceased’s body, his hair was found on her body and in her mouth, and he had motive and opportunity. Despite the overwhelming evidence against Omar, Bodie never felt he was guilty, and made up lies and evidence against an innocent man to make him look guilty (page 340). She made Omar to appear to be a victim or a horrible murder rather than the murderer.

Bodie left her kids behind with her ex-husband while she spent two weeks at the boarding school to teach a class on film and one on podcasting. During the entire two weeks, she never appeared to miss her children. She never called home to check on them and her children were only mentioned when another character asked about her children. She would only reply they are fine. I’ve never known a mother who did not miss her children when she was apart from them for two weeks. Bodie was an character with no conscious.

The ending was also disappointing. There was no resolution to the problem. After 400 pages, one would think there would be some resolution, but no, there was none.

This book was a total waste of time. Skip it.
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LibraryThing member bookczuk
Combination of mixed naration, several timelines, the butler/boyfriend/husband did it, and true crime with a little coming-of-age stuff thrown in, that takes place in a prep school in New Hampshire during a winter mini-master. 2023 read.
LibraryThing member rmarcin
Bodie Kane returns to her boarding school to teach a course 20 years after graduation, she is thrown back into the story that dominated her senior year: the death of Thalia Keith, her roommate. The athletic trainer, Omar Evans, was arrested, but Bodie doesn't think he did it. Bodie remembers things
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about the night of the murder, and she has some questions.
During her course, a student wants to revisit the case and do a podcast. This forces Bodie to examine all the things that happened, and the students that treated her poorly. Were they all innocent? And, who is the person that Bodie has questions to ask?
All is revealed. Plus, the violence against women is highlighted many times. I enjoyed the book, I wish it were about 50 pages shorter, though.
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LibraryThing member ccayne
Me too, obsession, rumors, assumptions, gossip, does the truth matter?, can justice prevail?, prejudice, protect your own, This novel has a very narrow focus and an expansive range. Makkai holds it all together.
LibraryThing member froxgirl
This highly anticipated new novel of investigation and exoneration rolls slowly, too slowly, building up to an unexpected denouement. Set in a middle tier New Hampshire boarding school in the mid-90s, former student and podcaster Bodie is riled by marital discord when she returns to the Granby
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School a decade later to teach a short class. One of her students chooses the murder of Bodie's roommate for her topic, which propels Bodie back to her own tragic childhood, the death of her father and brother and abandonment by her mother, and then her startling change from a miserable Indiana teenager to a miserable private school goth loner. The reader becomes acquainted with the teenage dramas of Bodie’s classmates, their bullying and their adolescent arrogance, and then to the discovery of Thalia Keith's lifeless body in a swimming pool. The more her podcast student delves into the case of the accused perpetrator of the crime and his years in prison based on circumstantial evidence, the more Bodie recalls her own suspicions and animus towards a drama teacher whose seeming intimacy with the victim returns to haunt her. There's a subplot about Bodie's ex-husband in a silly #METOO episode that should probably have been eliminated in the interest of tightening the suspense, but that's my only beef with this atmospheric mystery that should move to the top of everyone's favorite private school novel.
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LibraryThing member Gwendydd
A professional podcaster returns to the boarding school where she attended high school 20 years earlier to teach some workshops, including one on podcasting. She is obsessed with the murder of one of her classmates, who was found dead in the swimming pool. The school trainer was convicted of the
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crime and is spending his life in jail, but the narrator and her students - and a large community of people on the internet - are convinced he didn't do it.

This is a reasonably entertaining book, and it does keep you guessing. It seemed to go on longer than it needed to.
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LibraryThing member booklove2
A woman revisits her boarding school after a difficult past, twenty years later, to rethink what happened to a teenage girl who died at the school, even though the case has never really left her mind. It's interesting that Rebecca Makkai has been residing at the boarding school she went to for 21
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years, but she makes clear that the parallels end there. The writing style here is breezy and quick. Which is great, since the book seems to go a little too long. I'm getting a bit sad when other readers are pigeonholeing this book as "Murder Mystery" as I am seeing MUCH more to it than that. (I do not read murder mysteries.) This book says some interesting things about being a female body in the world and the vast differences of what may have been acceptable behavior from men in the 1990s (or earlier) and how we are reexamining things in the present (think MeToo). Most of these things acceptable or tolerated then would be Very Not Okay now. The time frame of the settings are perfect for the action for this novel -- the different time frames of accountability. With this book, how the justice in a murder case could have went very differently in different times. This will especially hit well for any readers who went to school in the 1990s, I think. Overall, a great look at how time changes how things are perceived, both of ourselves and others. (I also love that I spotted how much of an influence Shirley Jackson was in the other book I have read from her: 'The Hundred-Year House' as Makkai makes sure to mention Jackson in this book.) I didn't think I would like this book as much as I did! I think it will be a necessary classic novel for cementing the MeToo movement in history.
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LibraryThing member Kristelh
Reason read: not sure why I had a hold on this book. It was a long hold and it finally came available so it was my first book for June. It was enjoyable, maybe a bit too much trying to get all the political correctness included but I appreciated that it showed how damaging social media can be. The
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audio was well done. I rated it a B+. I see that most prefer the author's first book to this one but this is my first book by the author and I did like it.
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LibraryThing member KallieGrace
This was a perfectly fine mystery with a lot of commentary on rape culture and #metoo. The setting is pleasant and the characters were generally believable. It just isn't anything more than that.
LibraryThing member kayanelson
I like Rebecca Makkai. I live in Chicago and she is very active in the literary community which I find admirable. I have some questions for you was well written and quite a page turner. But I found it to be a very typical “boarding school” book. Some people absolutely love these kind of books
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and I did too on some of the first ones I read. But I’ve read too many and so the book just became a whodunnit.
One unique aspect Makkai included was having the protagonist speak to a person she referred to as “you.” We quickly figure out who that you is so it’s not confusing.
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LibraryThing member deslivres5
This one is indeed irresistible and intriguing; the format of the narrator, Bodie Kane relating the story in an accusing tone makes one believe she is possibly an unreliable narrator. Is she? This mystery crime thriller ultimately left me unsatisfied, like driving miles and miles to your favorite
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ice cream shop to find it had just closed.
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LibraryThing member bobbieharv
I waited too long to review this here and find I remember very little about it, which I suppose is telling. Reading what other reviewers said, I concur that it was a little too long, but that it kept me reading till the end. I liked the format of her podcasting class getting into the long-ago
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murder; and the weaving in of her husbands #metoo accusations. I did keep wondering who the "you" was that she was addressing, and hoped to find out both this and who killed Thalia by the end, but I don't think I did.
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LibraryThing member CatherineHsu
*Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for a free e-copy in exchange for an honest review.*

Actual Rating: 3.4

This book follows Bodie Kane, a successful film professor. When she is invited back to her old school Granby to teach a course, one of her students dredge up her past again in the form
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of an old murder case: the death of her roommate Thalia Keith, and the subsequent conviction of the school’s athletic trainer, Omar Evans. As Bodie finds herself once again poring over old evidence (or lack thereof), suspects (or again, the lack thereof), and testimonies (hers included), she finds herself falling deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole and realizing that there really may be more to the case than she’d thought.

I want to start out by saying that I really appreciate the social topics that the book covers. There’s the obvious issue of femicide — and how most of them are done by known male acquaintances, there’s how the justice system handles these cases, and then there are the power dynamics that allow for these situations to happen in the first place. Not only that, however, but the book also touches a bit on cancel culture from the other side, and it’s just interesting to see our main character at the center of conflicting perspectives. This book truly understands that there’s a lot of nuance around these stories, and it was really able to make me stop and think.

With that being said, I think my biggest comment is that the book would’ve benefited from deciding earlier if it wanted to be a harbinger of social commentary or a whodunnit. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s perfectly fine to have elements of both, but I felt a little whiplash from the pacing of how they were inserted. The book starts out being pretty clearly the former, with interspersed "whodunnit" chapters imagining different characters as the culprit. Towards the end, however, it becomes more of the latter — and suddenly it’s very difficult to emphasize the issue of “silencing a story” when you’re not even sure what that story is.

In terms of characters, there’s really only one that is fully developed — Bodie — and it actually works in the novel’s favor. She’s not necessarily a likable protagonist but it was very intriguing reading the ENTIRE story from her perspective because all her doubts and anxieties definitely came through in the narration. I did wish I felt more or an emotional connection to Thalia, who definitely comes across as more of a “myth” rather than a real character. It feels intentional, as we’re seeing the the events play out from Bodie’s point of view, but you definitely find yourself more invested in Bodie’s emotions than in the case itself.

Overall, I still enjoyed reading this one and I think it’s good for people who like contemporary women’s mystery fiction.
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LibraryThing member alanna1122
This book really started out like gangbusters for me. I love a boarding school setting - I loved it even more that it was a story being told by an adult. I think some of the descriptions Makkai gives are really really excellent and felt real to me. I went to a school much like the one described and
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I could really imagine the campus and the buildings. But, there were somethings that felt very out of place - this whole idea that February vacations were for elite schools in New Hampshire - the barest of research would let you know that that is common for all the public schools - private schools actually are more likely to have a longer break in March instead. Anyway, thats not too important but it took me out of it. I didn't love the gimmick of reciting cases over and over. It was effective the first time - but by the end - it felt gratuitous - and a little like a bad slam poetry event or something.

I'll read Makkai again because she really had me invested for 2/3s of the way.
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LibraryThing member streamsong
Bodie Kane is a film professor and podcaster. She’s been invited to teach a short between-semesters enrichment class at her old prep school in New Hampshire. The school was predominantly for the upper class wealthy kids along with a few promising scholarship recipients.

Bodie was one of the
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scholarship recipients that never quite fit in. Her first semester she was randomly given beautiful, wealthy, popular Thalia Keith as a roommate. The two were never friends, never enemies and drifted apart when they were no longer roommates.

Nevertheless, Bodie was as shocked as everyone else when Thalia’s body was found in the swimming pool. It was made to look like an accident but was in fact murder. The swim coach, one of the few black men on campus, was charged, convicted and at this point served more than twenty years in prison.

For her class Bodie suggests students pick topics from the school’s history for their podcasts. She lists Thalia’s murder as a possible subject; one boy chooses it and eventually the whole class including Bodie herself are sucked in.

Was the right man imprisoned? This case has continued to be of great interest on the internet and various internet groups are working to get the coach freed and still examining and re-examining evidence.

This is not a typical murder mystery. I loved the fact that Makkai reminds us that, at bottom, all murders are alike; and that so many of them hit the news cycles and true crime newscasts that the details are blurred. It’s also a look into the casual racism that can convict a black man; and how even DNA evidence can point in odd direction.
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LibraryThing member LindaLoretz
The plot of I Have Some Questions for You is that Bodie, a successful podcaster, returns as an alum presenter at her New England prep school to teach about podcasts during a short winter session. One of the high school students chooses to research a murder of a student during Bodie's years as a
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student. The murder is part of the school's lore and has gained some recent attention since a Black man has been incarcerated for the murder. Still, many doubted whether the crime was ever adequately investigated.

The author delves into many "true crime" topics as Bodie wonders whether she would have viewed the circumstances surrounding her former roommate's murder differently through today's lenses. However, while Bodie is on campus teaching, her former husband is involved in a scandal involving a lover who has accused him of using his power to seduce her. One wonders about Bodie's mindset and hypocrisy when she publicly jumps to the defense of her ex. Bodie viewed the age disparity in her husband's affair as less troublesome than the teachers' relationships with Thalia, her high school roommate and murder victim.

While reading I Have Some Questions for You, Rebecca Makkai encouraged me to think about how much has changed regarding men preying on women, especially those in power. But it also helped me realize that so much more change is necessary. Bodie encounters students for this winter session who have had antibully training since kindergarten. These modern students have the words to label inappropriate actions. On the other hand, Bodie still thinks and says things such as, "the teacher was "having an affair with Thalia," rather than describing a teacher having sex with a high school student as predatory. The students can easily classify assaults. However, those in power positions still hesitate to accuse and convict popular, accomplished men.
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Pages

448

ISBN

0593490142 / 9780593490143
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