strange and random happenstance: Rebecca Makkai

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.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: #MeToo, 90s, Boarding School, Bodie Kane, Camelot, Covid, Granby, Grooming, I Have Some Questions For You, Injustice, New Hampshire, Omar Evans, Podcast, Rebecca Makkai, Summer School, Thalia Keith, True Crime

Wars of the Roses: Stormbird by Conn Iggulden
Published by: Putnam Adult
Publication Date: July 8th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 496 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"In 1437, the Lancaster king Henry VI ascends the throne of England after years of semi-peaceful regency. Named “The Lamb,” Henry is famed more for his gentle and pious nature than his father’s famous battlefield exploits; already, his dependence on his closest men has stirred whispers of weakness at court.

A secret truce negotiated with France to trade British territories for a royal bride—Margaret of Anjou—sparks revolts across English territory. The rival royal line, the House of York, sees the chaos brought on by Henry’s weakness and with it not only opportunity in the monarch, but also their patriotic duty in ousting an ineffectual king. As storm clouds gather over England, King Henry and his supporters find themselves besieged abroad and at home. Who or what can save the kingdom before it is too late?"

Ok, after devouring all of The White Queen, I'm kind of now on a War of the Roses kick...

The White Magic Five and Dime by Steve Hockensmith with Lisa Falco
Published by: MIDNIGHT INK
Publication Date: July 8th, 2014
Format: Paperback, 336 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"A murdered mother leaves a shop full of secrets.

Much to Alanis McLachlan’s surprise, her con-woman mother, Barbra, has left her an inheritance—The White Magic Five & Dime, a new-age shop in tiny Berdache, Arizona. Reluctantly traveling to Berdache to claim her new property, Alanis decides to stay and pick up her estranged mother’s tarot reading business in an attempt to find out who killed her. With help from a hunky cop and her mother’s live-in teenage apprentice, Alanis begins faking her way through bogus tarot readings in order to win the confidence of her mother’s clients. But much to her surprise, the more she uses the tarot deck, the more Alanis begins to find real meaning in the cards."

And speaking of magic (ie, The White Queen), this looks like a fun new series about magic!

The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai
Published by: Viking Adult
Publication Date: July 8th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 352 Pages
To Buy

The official patter:
"Meet the Devohrs: Zee, a Marxist literary scholar who detests her parents’ wealth but nevertheless finds herself living in their carriage house; Gracie, her mother, who claims she can tell your lot in life by looking at your teeth; and Bruce, her step-father, stockpiling supplies for the Y2K apocalypse and perpetually late for his tee time. Then there’s Violet Devohr, Zee’s great-grandmother, who they say took her own life somewhere in the vast house, and whose massive oil portrait still hangs in the dining room.

Violet’s portrait was known to terrify the artists who resided at the house from the 1920s to the 1950s, when it served as the Laurelfield Arts Colony—and this is exactly the period Zee’s husband, Doug, is interested in. An out-of-work academic whose only hope of a future position is securing a book deal, Doug is stalled on his biography of the poet Edwin Parfitt, once in residence at the colony. All he needs to get the book back on track—besides some motivation and self-esteem—is access to the colony records, rotting away in the attic for decades. But when Doug begins to poke around where he shouldn’t, he finds Gracie guards the files with a strange ferocity, raising questions about what she might be hiding. The secrets of the hundred-year house would turn everything Doug and Zee think they know about her family on its head—that is, if they were to ever uncover them.

In this brilliantly conceived, ambitious, and deeply rewarding novel, Rebecca Makkai unfolds a generational saga in reverse, leading the reader back in time on a literary scavenger hunt as we seek to uncover the truth about these strange people and this mysterious house. With intelligence and humor, a daring narrative approach, and a lovingly satirical voice, Rebecca Makkai has crafted an unforgettable novel about family, fate and the incredible surprises life can offer."

A house, multiple generations... the family, a little Royal Tenenbaum-esque, I'm sold.