I Have Some Questions For You
On sale
29th February 2024
Price: £9.99
‘Whip-smart and uncompromising’ NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
‘Quietly riveting’ IRISH TIMES
‘It’s the perfect crime’ NEW YORKER
‘Impressive and complex’ GUARDIAN
‘Addictive’ OPRAH DAILY
The riveting new novel from the author of The Great Believers, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award
A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past: the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the 1995 murder of a classmate, Thalia Keith. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia’s death and the conviction of the school’s athletics coach, Omar Evans, are the subject of intense fascination online, Bodie prefers-needs-to let sleeping dogs lie.
But when The Granby School invites her back to teach a two-week course, Bodie finds herself inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn’t as much of an outsider at Granby as she’d thought-if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.
One of the most acclaimed contemporary American writers, Rebecca Makkai reinvents herself with each of her brilliant novels. Both a transfixing mystery and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, I Have Some Questions for You is her finest achievement yet.
‘Quietly riveting’ IRISH TIMES
‘It’s the perfect crime’ NEW YORKER
‘Impressive and complex’ GUARDIAN
‘Addictive’ OPRAH DAILY
The riveting new novel from the author of The Great Believers, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award
A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past: the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the 1995 murder of a classmate, Thalia Keith. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia’s death and the conviction of the school’s athletics coach, Omar Evans, are the subject of intense fascination online, Bodie prefers-needs-to let sleeping dogs lie.
But when The Granby School invites her back to teach a two-week course, Bodie finds herself inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn’t as much of an outsider at Granby as she’d thought-if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.
One of the most acclaimed contemporary American writers, Rebecca Makkai reinvents herself with each of her brilliant novels. Both a transfixing mystery and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, I Have Some Questions for You is her finest achievement yet.
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Reviews
Makkai doesn't shy away from moral complication in this impressive and complex novel
Makkai places her fictional murder firmly in the context of violence against women, cancel culture and our obsession with true crime . . . Makkai doesn't shy away from moral complication in this impressive novel
Both a deeply satisfying crime story and a thoughtful, even provocative, novel of ideas, I Have Some Questions for You narrates one woman's interrogation of her own past while in turn posing difficult questions directly to its reader: about sex, power, privilege, and the ambient violence of contemporary American life. What a feat of storytelling
I've been waiting years for a book like this! You will laugh, think, think again, cry and stay up all night finishing it. Unputdownable and unforgettable. Makkai has written the book of the season
An engrossing reflection of sexual politics and the devastating vagaries of the justice system . . . you'll be gripped by the mystery at its heart
It is at once a propulsive crime story and a thought-provoking meditation on sex, race and the abuse of power
A clever crime caper that tackles some big questions, it's storytelling at its best
[An] absorbing thriller... As well as being a well-plotted crime tale, the novel has pertinent things to say about the fetishising of murder, about easy online outrage, and about people who insert themselves into someone else's story. I Have Some Questions for You also offers a thought-provoking re-evaluation of what was problematic about male behaviour in the 1990s in the light of the #MeToo scandals of the 21st century
Compulsively readable
Endlessly intriguing, shrewd and suspenseful . . . I Have Some Questions for You is a page-turning read with compelling characters and sharp insights into power dynamics
Quietly riveting
Rebecca Makkai's extraordinary storytelling gifts are on full display in I Have Some Questions for You, a tense, sharply drawn, and impeccably plotted literary mystery and an urgent, propulsive story of the collision of gender, race, and class in a New England boarding school. I loved walking alongside narrator Bodie Kane - angry, obsessive, struggling with her own traumatic memories - in her imperfect attempts to reckon with a past she longs to leave behind
Some books are so universal that they feel bizarrely specific: I read I Have Some Questions for You as if it was written just for me, but I can't imagine who wouldn't love it. Timely, provocative, nuanced, generous-Rebecca Makkai astonishes once again with the perfect combination of brains and heart
I Have Some Questions for You ponders the nature and value of metaphor and muses on the fallibility of memory, the ease with which false narratives take shape, the human predilection for storytelling, and the way that stories can clarify and illuminate or mislead and misdirect. That Makkai's ethical, metaphysical, and epistemological deliberations find form in an exquisitely suspenseful and enormously entertaining story makes her work a beguiling reflection of the conundrum it so beautifully anatomizes
In this addictive page-turner, Makkai skewers how and why missing girls become media commodities
I adored I Have Some Questions For You. It was so beautifully stitched together, and the voice was desolate, detached, perfection. The looping nature of the narrative, the Serial-esque telling - everything was propulsive but also meandering in a way that had a vice-like control. My favourite book I've read this year, what an absolute triumph
This is sure to be a hit
Her prose is lean yet lush, with short, incantatory chapters and sentences as taut as piano wire . . . whip-smart and uncompromising
Both wide-angle observer and genius provocateur, Bodie is so real readers will expect to find her in their own yearbooks. Chilled as the deep New England winters during which it takes place and twisty with the slowly found and then suddenly illuminated branches of memory, Makkai's rich, winding story dazzles from cover to cover.
[Makkai adds] intriguing layers of complication . . . Well plotted, well written, and well designed
Dark academia meets state of America in this brilliant, original novel . . . not only a miscarriage of justice, but matters of class, race, guilt, internet witch-hunts and what - even in tiny communities - we can ever really know about each other
Makkai, though, approaches [memories] as a writer curious about psychology. She deftly explores how remembrance can melt into reverie, especially in speculative sections that attempt to reconstruct the scene of Thalia's death. And she nails, too, what it's like to remember . . . beautifully evokes the layered, full-body immersion that occurs when you return to a familiar place, and the weird gravity of an institution like Granby, whose students are transient but whose structures endure . . . It's the perfect crime
Insights into power, race and our fascination with true crime boost a satisfyingly plot-y mystery
Vastly entertaining . . . I Have Some Questions for You is both a thickly-plotted, character-driven mystery and a stylishly self-aware novel of ideas. It's being rightfully compared to Donna Tartt's 1992 blockbuster debut, The Secret History, because of its New England campus setting and because of the haunting voice-over that frames both novel . . in a twist worthy of Poe, Makkai suggests that the truth alone may not set you free or lay spirits to rest
A novel that combines the smarts of literary fiction with the thrills of a whodunnit, topped with all the divertissements of the best boarding school-set dramas . . . speaks loudly to the moment, but nothing about it feels faddy. Makkai is an exciting and talented storyteller, and this novel is a triumph
Clever [and] thought-provoking
I dare any reader to not find themselves utterly engrossed in Makkai's superbly paced mystery . . . one of the most satisfying reading experiences I've had in a long time . . . it is a robust literary mystery and something (and I don't make this comparison lightly) that could've been penned by Donna Tartt
One of the things I love most about Rebecca Makkai is her absolutely engaging written voice; reading her books feels like hearing a well-told story by a longtime friend. This book - through the voice of its beautifully complex narrator, Bodie Kane - brings readers along on a journey they won't forget
Part boarding school drama, part forensic whodunnit, I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU is a true literary mystery -haunting and hard to put down
A sharp addition to the 'dark academia' canon