I Have Some Questions For You
By Rebecca Makai
448 pages
What’s it about?
Bodie Kane is a successful podcaster and film professor who has decided to return to her former boarding school to teach a couple of two-week courses. The last time she was at The Granby School it was the 1990’s and she had been an awkward teen dealing with her own issues. Upon her return she finds herself immersed in old memories- not all of them good. One of her students decides her podcast project will be to investigate the murder of Bodie’s old roommate Thalia Keith. Bodie is immediately drawn back into that time. What does she really remember and was the wrong person convicted of this crime?What did it make me think about?
This book had so many layers! I was struck the most by how the latest generation is depicted- and what that means for the future.Should I read it?
This book was SO deep and layered and complicated. It reminded me in many ways of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Unlike The Secret History this novel spends some of it’s time on the effects of social media on the next generation. I certainly walked away thinking how very different being a teenager is now with an audience watching and commenting on every move you make. I am so very glad I grew up without all this pressure! The mystery in this story serves as a conduit for a discussion on race, class, memory, and generational differences. This would make an excellent book club choice!Quote-
“I thought of a friend in LA who’d said recently of her own daughter, “It feels wrong to give her all this happiness and confidence when we know what is coming. Seventh grade is going to hit like a wall. It feels like fattening a pig for slaughter.” But what was the alternative? Starving the pig?”What’s it about?
Bodie Kane is a successful podcaster and film professor who has decided to return to her former boarding school to teach a couple of two-week courses. The last time she was at The Granby School it was the 1990’s and she had been an awkward teen dealing with her own issues. Upon her return she finds herself immersed in old memories- not all of them good. One of her students decides her podcast project will be to investigate the murder of Bodie’s old roommate Thalia Keith. Bodie is immediately drawn back into that time. What does she really remember and was the wrong person convicted of this crime?
What did it make me think about?
This book had so many layers! I was struck the most by how the latest generation is depicted- and what that means for the future.
Should I read it?
This book was SO deep and layered and complicated. It reminded me in many ways of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. Unlike The Secret History this novel spends some of it’s time on the effects of social media on the next generation. I certainly walked away thinking how very different being a teenager is now with an audience watching and commenting on every move you make. I am so very glad I grew up without all this pressure! The mystery in this story serves as a conduit for a discussion on race, class, memory, and generational differences. This would make an excellent book club choice!
Quote-
“I thought of a friend in LA who’d said recently of her own daughter, “It feels wrong to give her all this happiness and confidence when we know what is coming. Seventh grade is going to hit like a wall. It feels like fattening a pig for slaughter.” But what was the alternative? Starving the pig?”
