4/5 stars
I Have Some Questions For You, by Rebecca Makkai (2023)
Bodie Kane is a film professor and true crime podcaster in California, living next door to her husband, from whom she is separated, with her two children. It's been over 20 years since she has returned to the elite, New Hampshire (and basically all white) boarding school she attended for high school. Over 20 years since her roommate was found dead in the swimming pool. Over 20 years since the Black man who served as the Athletic Trainer was blamed, and convicted.
Now, Bodie has been invited back to teach one film and one podcasting course for two weeks. She is still haunted by her roommate Thalia's murder, and still troubled by the quick, and possibly negligent, way that the accused murderer was fingered and tossed in jail.
When one of her students chooses Thalia's murder as a podcast subject, more and more begins to come to light, and Bodie begins to rethink some of her long-held assumptions about the school, her classmates, and one teacher in particular, who always took a special interest in Thalia. Bodie and her students fall further and further down the rabbit hole, threatening to upend two decades of relative "peace" that the school, the small NH town, her former classmates and teachers, and Thalia's family, have held.
It's a great mystery! A little too long, but very entertaining. I really liked Bodie - she's a no-nonsense woman, who also has a complicated and messy relationship to relationships. The book lightly tackles some interesting issues, like the rise in True Crime narratives, and whether the obsession glorifies murder. Also deals with issues of racism and appropriation, female empowerment, and the turbulence of the teenage years.
I will say that if you like a book to wrap up every little loose end and leave everyone in a happily-ever-after kind of mood, this is not the book for you. It comes to a satisfying conclusion, and one can assume where the story is going to go, but it does not wrap it up with a bow. Sometimes I really hate that, sometimes it works. In this case, I think it worked.
UP NEXT: The Crane Husband, by Kelly Barnhill
