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library_chick 's review for:
I Have Some Questions for You
by Rebecca Makkai
So get ready for a flawed main character who doesn't change much here. That may be Makkai's intent, and other reviewers have called the book "stale" and unfulfilling despite being fans of Makkai's other books. Let's go there, though. What if the point of this Metoo book is to illustrate how hard it is for the average woman to stand up for another woman, and in this case it's a girl, who has been wronged and, in this case that girl was murdered?
Bodie is a Midwesterner who comes from a dysfunctional home as a teen to this prestigious boarding school. In her senior year her roommate is murdered, and the small town police pin the murder on a Black man who works at the school. He's probably not guilty. That's the story. Bodie goes back to the school to teach for a one-year assignment, as her life in her 40s is not taking off like she's hoped. Here again, Bodie kind of lucks out getting to go back to this school full of nice, elite kids. (Let me tell you. I'm a teacher and these kids in the story are advanced echelon.) She gets a chance to re- explore the case which is reopened, and lots of her former classmates come back to town to be deposed and questioned. One night Bodie skirts around the issue with the friend of the guy who probably killed the roommate, and they drink and Bodie gets her titular questions answered. This friend is undoubtedly an accomplice in that he helped with the crime coverup. My advice: Read the book. Just to get to this scene. It's satisfying for a brief moment. Kind of like watching with the slow unfolding mess of E. Jean Carroll and Trump. We know he's guilty, but he'll probably never do any time for it. It's satisfying somehow to see even the briefest of moments where a privileged white man has to wrestle with his own b.s. Frustrating to see Bodie get this far but not eventually make an impact on the case? Yep. But that is the theme of so many stories like this. White men who corroborate and fuck up and get away with things, while women can lose their lives or spend their lives in perpetual PTSD states trying to understand why they feel so isolated and unseen.
Bodie is a Midwesterner who comes from a dysfunctional home as a teen to this prestigious boarding school. In her senior year her roommate is murdered, and the small town police pin the murder on a Black man who works at the school. He's probably not guilty. That's the story. Bodie goes back to the school to teach for a one-year assignment, as her life in her 40s is not taking off like she's hoped. Here again, Bodie kind of lucks out getting to go back to this school full of nice, elite kids. (Let me tell you. I'm a teacher and these kids in the story are advanced echelon.) She gets a chance to re- explore the case which is reopened, and lots of her former classmates come back to town to be deposed and questioned. One night Bodie skirts around the issue with the friend of the guy who probably killed the roommate, and they drink and Bodie gets her titular questions answered. This friend is undoubtedly an accomplice in that he helped with the crime coverup. My advice: Read the book. Just to get to this scene. It's satisfying for a brief moment. Kind of like watching with the slow unfolding mess of E. Jean Carroll and Trump. We know he's guilty, but he'll probably never do any time for it. It's satisfying somehow to see even the briefest of moments where a privileged white man has to wrestle with his own b.s. Frustrating to see Bodie get this far but not eventually make an impact on the case? Yep. But that is the theme of so many stories like this. White men who corroborate and fuck up and get away with things, while women can lose their lives or spend their lives in perpetual PTSD states trying to understand why they feel so isolated and unseen.