I have some questions for Rebecca Makkai: How do you manage to pen completely different stories, atmosphere, characters, and narrative for each book? The Great Believers, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer, immersed me into my past in the late 80s, when I was able to work with AIDS clients exclusively for a year. I’m an RN, and I can vouch that TGB was authentic in every way. One of my favorite contemporary novels. For her latest book, Ms. Makkai takes on the true crime podcast fever of our nation’s listeners. She also poked around where these podcasts go sideways, the lure of the lurid and the deadest of the dead. This book was topical, meeting the moment when podcasts are all the rage, and it is difficult to parse whether you are listening to thoughtful true crimes on these podcasts or if they are being gratuitous. In her own literary potboiler way, the author wrote about a current film studies instructor doing a two-week stint as a podcast teacher in a boarding school. Bodie Kane lived through the murder of her roommate at Granby in New Hampshire back in the mid-1990s. She has some questions for a lot of people.
The first 250 pages builds and adds girth to the main story, a few subplots, and the characters who inhabit the pages. The last 150 pages take that slow burn to a hot suspense. It’s clear that Bodie is traumatized, mostly by the murder but by other things, too. I’m a generation older than Makkai, but at a Q&A with Julia Whelan Monday night, she talked about how many creepy, perpy, pervy men, got away with it in the 1990s. I immediately related, as a Boomer, when I don’t even think that “sexual” and “harassment” could sit next to each other in a sentence back in my youth! Thank you, Rebecca, for including that character that we can hate on, who I can hiss at, as a stand-in for all the inappropriate behavior we put up with from men (including bosses!) before (and after) Anita Hill, and #MeToo. She carefully constructs a tidy whodunnit within a messy bunch of lives. She kept me guessing, and I’ll say that she stayed one step ahead of me, for sure! Makkai takes on Twitter rages and the sensationalizing of the "prvilegeddeadwhitegirl" like no other.
The last 150 pages, and then—whew—the last 50 pages, had me doing calisthenics in my head and heart. The ending was organic and thoughtful, the book was a delight all the way. “What happens when your only escape is the same thing you’re trying to escape? Here’s the soundtrack of your tragedy: Dance to it." Could she have some answers for us?
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un-put-down-able, spellbinding book
I loved this book so, so, so much! For the first time in ages, I stayed up reading into the wee hours because I literally couldn’t put the book down. It also did that magic thing that made me first fall in love with reading as a child—I became Bodie Kane as I read—her thoughts were in my head, my body felt her responses, her trepidation, her amusement, her longing. Rebecca Makkai is a genius at creating that miraculous melding when first person narration weaves its spell over you and you embody the character. The story draws you all the way in like that. I won’t include any spoilers, because I really, really hate knowing about a story before I enter it. I will give one word of caution—when you sit down to read I Have Some Questions for You—and you definitely should read it, make sure your schedule is open enough so that you don’t have to put it down for few hours. Hands down, best book I’ve read all year.
Top reviews from other countries
Elyseo da Silva
Thoughtful and subtle masterpiece
Reviewed in Germany on February 6, 2024
Dinne
Annoying rambling, long-winded, self-indulgent
Reviewed in Germany on March 23, 2024