Book Review - Rebecca Makkai's I Have Some Questions For You
I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai
Published by: Viking
Publication Date: February 21st, 2023
Format: Kindle, 448 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
In 1995 Thalia Keith was murdered at the elite New Hampshire boarding school Granby. The school's athletic trainer, Omar Evans, was fitted up for the crime. In 1994 Thalia Keith's roommate was Bodie Kane. Thalia's murder was just one more horrific event that happened in Bodie's life that she's trying to forget. She has a successful career teaching film at UCLA and running the podcast Starlet Fever. Which is why Granby asks her to come and teach a class or two for their January "mini-mester." She will spend two weeks with students teaching them film history and podcasting. But her secret hope is that one of her students will take up Thalia Keith's case for their podcast. In the weeks leading up to her return to Granby Bodie has gone down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories with regard to Thalia. An innocent link to a video Bodie had never seen of the production of Camelot the night Thalia was murdered has her asking questions she never would have thought to ask as a senior in high school. But when her student, Britt, starts to investigate, Bodie can claim that it was all her student's idea. It wasn't her idea to come back and open up old wounds, even if that's exactly what she wanted to do. She has plausible deniability as her entire class becomes obsessed with the case. And there legitimately seems to be a case. Omar Evans was a convenient villain, he was black and not "one of them." So the school and local law enforcement never looked beyond him despite things not adding up. One big piece of evidence overlooked by the original investigation is that it looks like Thalia was having an affair with one of the teachers. Dennis Bloch was the music teacher and, oddly enough, Bodie's favorite teacher. But things start to slide into place making it look like he could have silenced his young protegee. Looking back Bodie realizes that the culture of the times let teachers like Dennis Bloch prey on innocent girls by being the "cool teacher." He was young and understood them, and therefore could act with impunity. And perhaps Thalia wasn't the first? Thalia was young and vibrant and she didn't deserve to die. But what's more, her killer deserves to be brought to justice. The times have changed and the female of the species is going to prove she's deadlier than the male.
One can't discount that there's a nostalgia factor to true crime. Reading or listening about a time and place that brings up your own associations that are somehow comforting despite the horror. I really didn't expect to be so affected by this when I picked up I Have Some Questions For You, but here I find myself. Not connecting to the location or the murder, but to the era. To 1995. To how the world was different. To how the world has drastically improved. I was also in high school in 1995. In fact I would have been a year behind Bodie Kane had we been in school together and she weren't fictional. And everything she was saying about how life was like back then I found myself agreeing with. The casual sexism, the way boys behaved and we just excused it, because this was what life was. As women, as girls, we didn't know that there could be a reckoning. We didn't know that things would change. You just accepted being shit on and made uncomfortable by the opposite sex. Oh, and let's not forget how vicious girls could be with their little cliques. I look back and wonder how I ever survived. And I really don't think there's been an author I've read who just understood the pervasive shit that I had to wade through on a day to day basis for years. Rebecca Makkai gets it. She gets it completely. And this might not have been my school or my classmates, but they were. They had the same ideas, the same attitudes. It was nostalgic and cathartic reading this book. Knowing that I wasn't alone. Knowing that while I struggled then that I can look back and understand that it was just the way the world worked and thankfully times have changed. Sadly they haven't changed as much as they should, but to acknowledge that boys were just given free reign to be the creepy the little shits they wanted to be and no one called them out on it, at least, for me, this meant something. And yes, I know not all boys were creepy shits, but there was always at least one and that one made your life a living hell. Sadly the book wasn't able to keep it's narrative focus once it jumped forward in time to Omar's hearing for a retrial. It felt like it was trying to be too of the moment with MeToo and Covid. We haven't had enough time to come to grips with what "now" is and how it will be remembered so having it be the narrative focus instead of the lens we're looking through to the past made it feel like it was trying too hard. Add to that the fact that Bodie's just sitting around doing nothing, until she's doing a classmate, and there was just too much of a disconnect. The past should have informed the present more and instead we are left dissatisfied.
Post a Comment