A review by ginger_curmudgeon
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

mysterious medium-paced

5.0

I’ve been looking forward to this book since its released was announced. Rebecca Makkai wrote one of my all-time favorite books, “The Great Believers”, so I also had trepidation about this one. What if it was a let down? What if I didn’t like her other books?

Well, I loved it! It started kind of slow for me, but I’m OK with that. The groundwork had to be laid. It didn’t take long for me to be hooked though either. 

I appreciate how Makkai set up the narrative flow. Bodie tells us the story, but she’s really telling the story to one of the other characters who we only see through Bodie and others telling of experiences with him. He’s the one main character we don’t hear from and don’t actually see. I feel like this technique serves a dual purpose, it drives the narrative for the reader, but also mirrors Bodie being a podcast host, even though this is her life and not her podcast. 

I won’t spoil anything, but there are things late in the book that are revealed or that happen that I didn’t see coming. I thought they’d go a different way. Not that I gasped in shock, but I predicted wrong. I wouldn’t change them though. I’m satisfied with the choices she made for her characters.

I also appreciate that the book ends in a sort of non-cliche manner. There’s no pretty package wrapped with a bow. Not to say that everything is left unfinished, but it’s not the hastily done ending so many authors give us.

I think part of what makes me like Bodie so much is that she’s not perfect and she doesn’t pretend to be. She has issues and knows it. She even knows when the issue is her own doing. 

A big part of this story is about looking at your past through a new lens. That’s really what these characters are dealing with, except for the young students who don’t have that awareness yet. I found myself wondering, at different points in the story, about my past and how I might view things in a different light now if I really stop to reflect. 

I also appreciate how Makkai treated COVID in this story. Bodie is thankful for the anonymity of wearing a mask in public. At one point she’s at a party and thinks about her presence there and the fact that she walked in wearing a mask that she took off to be able to eat and drink. She thinks about it in more of a self-conscious “am I making people uncomfortable” way, which was only a small part of everything else going on in that scene for her. 

I think it’s finally time for me to read Makkai’s other books, maybe “The Borrower” should be first.