I Have Some Questions for You

by Rebecca Makkai

Publisher: Viking
Ginasbookreport Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Genre: Mystery / Thriller / Fiction / Literary Fiction
Read This If You Love: Serial 

“You’re obsessed. You’re getting obsessed.”  

“Is there forgiveness in your dreams?” 

This booooooooook!!! You might have heard about this one…I jest because it is EVERYWHERE. My prediction is that it will end up being a love it or hate it book (more on that later) and I loved it. While reading it, there was a compulsion to read one more chapter, find out one more thing. This, to me, is a what strong storytelling looks like. Every page included something that was eventful, impactful, or interesting. I Have Some Questions for You is literary fiction mixed with mystery and mystique against a backdrop of a coming of age story.

“—the way every girl was just a body to be used, to be discarded—the way that if you had a body, they could grab you—if you had a body, they could destroy you.”

Bodie is a successful podcaster and film professor and she returns to Granby, the boarding school of her youth. She is there to teach a few shortened courses, including one on how to produce a podcast. When one of the students selects the murder of Thalia Keith, Bodie finds herself transported back to her youth and all the dark events that surrounded her. Thalia was Bodie’s roommate the year before Thalia was found murdered on campus. As Bodie and her students dig into the murder, they are less sure of the conviction of Omar Evans—the athletic trainer. If not Omar, then who killed Thalia and why? Did Bodie know more than she realized? 

So why did I mention it as a love it or hate it book? Makkai is well-known for her Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Great Believers. While the author’s incredible writing and storytelling carries into I Have Some Questions for You, it is a mystery at the core. A mystery that centers around our cultural obsession with true crime stories. In my experience, you either understand the obsession or you find it distasteful. I’m firmly in the find it interesting camp. To me, it is an obsession with understanding psychology and sociology, as well as using reporting in podcasts to peel apart looks at our justice system. Anyway, I think some readers will come to this book looking for high-brow literature and will be critical of what I Have Some Questions for You. If you just read it and go along for the ride, you may find it as engrossing as I did. Does it have lots of unsaid commentary on our obsession with dead women? Yes. That on its own was also interesting.

So why not a 5-star? There was a portion of the book that didn’t live up to my expectations like the other chapters did. Although I found this portion of the book was appropriate for the story, this section was just okay, imo, thus the 4.5-stars. (Note: I’m being intentionally vague so as to avoid spoilers. After you read the book, you will likely know what section of the book let me down a tad.)

In short, if you come to this wanting the Pulitzer Prize winning book part 2, look elsewhere. If you want a compulsive read with way more substance than a popcorn mystery, then this book is for you.

“We talked about the difference between a character remembering, and the camera as an impartial eye on the actual past.”