You’ll need to set aside a few days to read I Have Some Questions For You by American author Rebecca Makkai, but it’s worth it. This is a whodunnit with extras. The novel is set in rural America at a secluded private boarding school for high school students. In the 1970s one of the students is killed and the gym assistant is convicted and jailed.
The narrator, Bodie Kane, one of the students at the school at the time of the murder, revisits in the 2020s to teach a group of students about podcasting, the way she makes her living. Her two weeks at the school bring back memories of the people and events surrounding the murder. She becomes increasingly convinced that the wrong person was convicted. For their student podcast exercise, two of her current students start investigating the crime anew.
For me, the charm of this novel was not so much the solving of the murder mystery as the intriguing voice of the narrator. Forty years on from her school days, Bodie is a clear-eyed observer of herself, her fellow students and teachers in the past and of the people and events of her life in the present. Hers is a consistently entertaining voice for a narrator, in accord with her persona as a podcaster.
The identity of the person Bodie suspects is the real murderer is unclear at first when Rebecca Makkai inserts questions addressed to the absent suspect. That person is later named. These clever passages help explain the book’s title.
Another outstanding feature of the novel is its depiction of life for the 1970s teenagers at the boarding school. What they got up to outside class, the forming and reforming of friendships, and the cruel bullying that took place before smart phones are all so well depicted in this novel.
If you enjoy coming of age and crime fiction novels or find true crime podcasts fascinating, I Have Some Questions For You has it all.
