I Have Some Questions for You

 I Have Some Questions for You

By Rebecca Makkai

This was an immersive, couldn't-put-it-down read that explores the intersection of all sorts of 

contemporary issues: #metoo, predatory prep school teachers, podcasts, true crime obsession, racism, and cancel culture. It's a lot.

The way the book reads is reminiscent of Serial, which examined the case of Adnan Syed and ultimately resulted in his release. Its narrator is Bode Kane, a professional podcaster who normally dedicates her airtime to the abuse of Hollywood starlets of the past but who becomes obsessed with the murder of Thalia Kieth, her onetime roommate at an exclusive prep school in the woods of New Hampshire called Granby. Kane returns to Granby during a two-week break in regular classes to teach a course on podcasting and helps steer one of her students to Thalia's murder. This amateur first attempt spawns a full-blown podcast that results in a new hearing for Omar, a black athletic trainer on whom the murder was, it seems, unjustly pinned. 

At the same time as she is mentoring her students, though, Kane herself becomes embroiled in controversy when her former husband, Jerome, is accused of abusing an art-world neophyte just as his career was starting to take off. Though her life's work is exposing the abuse of women actors and her current project is finding justice for a murdered young woman, Bode defends Jerome -- because even the accused admits that everything in the relationship had been consensual. So what, Bode questions publicly, is the actual abuse? 

Meanwhile, Bode begins to suspect, strongly, that her one-time choral teacher was sexually involved with Thalia, and might be responsible for her murder. But these encounters were also "consensual". So where is the line? Who deserves to be cancelled? Obviously, a teacher-predator -- and Bode quite deliberately sics a devoted online following on the former teacher in the hopes that he will, in fact, be cancelled. 

Is the author suggesting that the line between bad relationships and abuse is actually very clear if only we opened our eyes and looked for it? Or is she saying that these things are more complicated than they seem? Is she implying that #metoo and cancel culture have gone too far? Or that a little collateral damage is okay if it keeps our society bending toward justice?

Interesting questions, all, and they are wrapped up in an addictive plot. Great book.