Reviews

In her forties, Bodie Kane is invited back to Granby, the private boarding school she attended as a teen, to teach a two-week mini-course on podcasting. Back on campus, she is flooded with memories of her time there, and especially of the night a girl who had been her roommate was murdered.

For the first half of this story, I kept thinking, this is brilliant, completely brilliant. It is a complex blend of any number of current issues/trends — the #metoo movement, #blacklivesmatter, true crime podcasts, online harassment, cancel culture, the power of memory, the impossibility of ever knowing the truth about exactly what happened last week, let alone twenty-five years ago. Makkai seemed to be pulling all of these things together, layering them, piling them on top of each other in both the past and the present, using them to illuminate each other in a way that was just fascinating to me. I had a hard time putting it down.

But by the end, I was less impressed. Part of my fascination with the first half was because Bodie is likeable and relatable, but also a thoroughly unreliable narrator. Her biases and needs and unhealed trauma color every thing she does. She pushes and manipulates, and hides behind her students, expecting them to bear the brunt of actions she, the adult in the room, is afraid to take herself. It’s sort of deliciously cringy, because again— relatable.

But it seemed by the end that Makkai had tried to make her out to be a moral hero, a Warrior for The Truth, and it just didn’t work. At least, not for me. Somewhere in the last few pages, I found myself thinking, I’m not sure the book I read is the book Makkai thought she wrote. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say I’m not sure the book I thought I was reading is the same as what Makkai actually wrote.

It would be a great book club book if you have a group that loves to dig into the details and really wrestle with what happens. It’s worth reading, and —no surprise from Makkai— the writing is great.

jl27's review against another edition

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4.0

3.75 for the story, 4 for being an easy read.

Yes, this book has its issues, but I'll let all the other reviews out there speak to those.

Not a super thrilling story, and one that is kind of easily predictable, if I'm being completely honest. But enjoyable enough to finish, characters likable (self-loathing gets a bit old at times), lots of relatable things said/ happening throughout. Too many things going on, at times, for a reader to juggle, though, and some of those go unresolved, which was a bummer.