Bodie Kane is a journalist and podcaster and has been invited back to her alma mater – Granby, a well-heeled private school in New Hampshire where Bodie felt she never fitted in – to teach a course on film studies. Returning brings back memories of the murder of Thalia Keith, Bodie’s one-time roommate. Omar Evans, a Black athletics trainer was found guilty of Thalia’s murder, but that decision has always bothered Bodie. The five students she teaches are given podcast assignments and Britt and Alder decide to reinvestigate Thalia’s murder.
I Have Some Questions For You is written in the second person. The ‘you’ she addresses is Denny Bloch, the teacher Bodie believes was having an affair with Thalia and responsible for her murder. Thalia was killed on the night of a student musical and the timeline of events that night proves crucial. The students’ podcast ignites an appeal to quash Omar’s conviction and people from Bodie’s year are subpoenaed to give evidence. Not all the alumni are happy to relive the murder, but challenging their memories exposes the ease with which the only Black member of staff was convicted.
While this book centres on the murder of one woman, it seethes with multiple (real-life) crimes against women, from the most subtle coercion and bullying, through to rape and murder. Most of it is sexual and all of it can be sheeted down to male aggression. Twitter storms, social media pile-ons, wrongful convictions (with racial biases) and the spectrum of true crime podcasts (from the professional to the conspiracy-laden) are dissected.
Makkai’s writing is passionate and assured. Thalia’s sexual exploitation and murder are fictional but heartbreakingly relatable to the ruined lives of too many women.
Reviewed by Bob Moore
FROM THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Makkai’s 84 books project
My father died in January of 2020, in Budapest. My sister and I weren’t able to get there for his funeral, and weren’t able to hold a memorial here. He was, among other things, a literary translator. I have read far too few books in translation. So I’ve decided to circle the globe (figuratively) reading 84 books in translation, one for every year of his life. We’ll both start and end in Hungary, as he did.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rebecca Makkai is the Chicago-based author of the novels The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower. The Great Believers was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and received the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize. Makkai is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada College and Northwestern University, and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.
Her work has been translated into 20 languages, and her short fiction has been anthologised.
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