I Have Some Questions For You
by Rebecca Makkai
The narrator in Rebecca Makkai’s latest novel is Bodie Kane, a podcaster and film historian in her forties who returns to Granby, the elitist boarding school in New Hampshire from which she graduated two decades before, to teach a class in media and podcasting. During her own student years at Granby, Thalia Keith, Bodie’s roommate, was murdered, a crime for which Omar, a Black athletic trainer, is serving a lengthy prison sentence. Bodie has serious reservations about Omar’s conviction, believing it to have been based on racial prejudice and dubious testimonies, including hers. Her suspicions are, instead, focussed on a music teacher who had dubious relationships with students of his, including Thalia.
When one of Bodie’s students chooses Thalia’s murder as the subject of her podcast project, Bodie is cautiously encouraging, hoping that this amateur cold-case investigation could unearth new evidence which could be useful for a retrial. In the meantime, however, Bodie’s estranged artist husband Jerome, with whom she still maintains a relatively close relationship, himself finds himself at the centre of a #MeToo scandal, with a young performance artist accusing him of a past abusive relationship.
I Have Some Questions For You has a strong narrative drive, and even though I eventually felt it was rather overlong, it did hold my interest for long stretches. As one might infer even from a reading of my brief nd reductive summary, the novel raises several “big issues”, including the definition of “consent”; what constitutes “abuse”; racial and class prejudice and how these seep into the education and justice system. Makkai takes a gamble and recounts her story from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, who is inconsistent not only in her memories, but also in her ethical positions: thus, Bodie is keen to seek justice for Thalia and Omar, but adopts a defensive stance where her (ex-)husband is concerned.
Ultimately, this novel left me with mixed
feelings. Although it grapples with
heavy subject matter, it shares something of Bodie’s own confusion, leaving us
with no clear, final position. But,
perhaps, the whole point of the novel is – as its title implies – that of
asking questions, not providing answers.
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