Overview
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Named a Best Book of 2023 by The Washington Post , People , USA Today , NPR, Esquire , Good Housekeeping , Real Simple , The Boston Globe , CrimeReads and more "A twisty, immersive whodunit perfect for fans of Donna Tartt's The Secret History. " -- People "Spellbinding." -- The New York Times Book Review "[An] irresistible literary page-turner." -- The Boston Globe The riveting new novel -- "part true-crime page-turner, part campus coming-of-age" ( San Francisco Chronicle) -- f rom the author of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist The Great Believers A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past--the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia's death and the conviction of the school's athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers--needs--to let sleeping dogs lie. But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent aws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought--if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case. In I Have Some Questions for You , award-winning author Rebecca Makkai has crafted her most irresistible novel yet: a stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman's reckoning with her past, with a transFixing mystery at its heart. Timely, hypnotic, and populated with a cast of unforgettable characters, I Have Some Questions for You is at once a compulsive page-turner and a literary triumph.
Professional Reviews
"Bewitching."
-- Vanity Fair
"[An] addictive page-turner."
-- O Quarterly
"Thought-provoking, deeply unsettling and undeniably riveting . . . Part #MeToo manifesto, part true-crime page-turner, part campus coming-of-age, [ I Have Some Questions for You ] serves up compelling insights about the fallibility of memory and the slippery nature of truth . . . it''s a fully immersive, addictive whodunit."
-- San Francisco Chronicle
"Makkai''s triumph of a novel mixes clever storytelling with an exploration of consent, control and memory . . . satisfying and cleverly multi-layered . . . combines the smarts of literary fiction with the thrills of a whodunnit, topped with all the divertissements of the best boarding school-set dramas."
-- Financial Times (London)
"Makkai has crafted an un-put-downable, captivating boarding school mystery novel with podcasting, teaching, race, divorce, parenting, professional drive, and teen dynamics as undercurrents . . . The writing in this book is absolutely A+ sensational. Pure perfection."
-- Zibby Owens, GoodMorningAmerica.com
"[ I Have Some Questions for You ] calls into question our relationships to memory and power while also challenging readers to reconsider how we think about race, sex, and class."
-- Time
" The Secret History meets Serial... [in this] modern campus novel, in which a woman goes back to her old boarding school to teach a class on podcasting and winds up reliving--and relitigating--her own youth and the murder of a classmate."
-- LitHub
"This psychological thriller hits all the high notes, complete with at least a few revelations you won''t see coming."
-- Good Housekeeping
"Dark academia meets state of America in this brilliant, original novel."
-- Daily Mail
"An enthralling mystery, an interrogation of the past, an entrancing campus novel, I Have Some Questions for You is a propulsive page-turner."
-- B&N Reads
"Part boarding school drama, part forensic whodunnit, I Have Some Questions for You is a true literary mystery--haunting and hard to put down."
-- Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad and The Candy House
"I''ve been waiting years for a book like this! You will laugh, think, think again, cry and stay up all night finishing it. Unputdownable and unforgettable. Makkai has written the book of the season."
-- Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less and Less Is Lost
"Both a deeply satisfying crime story and a thoughtful, even provocative, novel of ideas, I Have Some Questions for You narrates one woman''s interrogation of her own past while in turn posing difficult questions directly to its reader: about sex, power, privilege, and the ambient violence of contemporary American life. What a feat."
-- Rumaan Alam, New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind
"Some books are so universal that they feel bizarrely specific: I read I Have Some Questions for You as if it was written just for me, but I can''t imagine who wouldn''t love it. Timely, provocative, nuanced, generous--Rebecca Makkai astonishes once again with the perfect combination of brains and heart."
-- Laura Lippmann, author of Dream Girl
"Rebecca Makkai''s extraordinary storytelling gifts are on full display in I Have Some Questions for You , a tense, sharply drawn, and impeccably plotted literary mystery and an urgent, propulsive story of the collision of gender, race, and class in a New England boarding school. I loved walking alongside narrator Bodie Kane--angry, obsessive, struggling with her own traumatic memories--in her imperfect attempts to reckon with a past she longs to leave behind."
-- Elizabeth Wetmore, New York Times bestselling author of Valentine
"One of the things I love most about Rebecca Makkai''s writing is her absolutely engaging voice; reading her books feels like hearing a well-told story by a longtime friend. This book--through the voice of its beautifully complex narrator, Bodie Kane--brings readers along on a journey they won''t forget."
-- Liz Moore, New York Times bestselling author of Long Bright River
"Clever and deeply thoughtful . . . a deliciously complex reckoning . . . [ I Have Some Questions for You ] is sure to be a hit."
-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A thought-provoking and delicious tale of life and death and justice that very well may have gone sideways."
-- Library Journal (starred review)
"Engrossing . . . a well-plotted indictment of systemic racism and misogyny craftily disguised as a thriller and beautifully constructed to make its points."
-- BookPage (starred review)
"A beguiling campus novel . . . Chilled as the deep New England winters during which it takes place and twisty with the slowly found and then suddenly illuminated branches of memory, Makkai''s rich, winding story dazzles from cover to cover."
-- Booklist (starred review)
"Every year, I look for the novels that truly respect their victims, and think carefully about the tropes of true crime; for 2023, [ I Have Some Questions for You ] is that novel."
-- Molly Odintz, CrimeReads
"Makkai''s novel takes on some of the defining issues of its time [...] without battering readers with them. Instead, Makkai carefully winds her themes around her story''s scaffolding, which strengthens her masterly plot even more."
-- Shelf Awareness
"[Makkai adds] intriguing layers of complication . . . Well plotted, well written, and well designed."
-- Kirkus Reviews Praise for Rebecca Makkai''s previous novel, The Great Believers :
"[A] page turner . . . An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it''s like to live during times of crisis."
-- The New York Times Book Review
"Beautiful, tender, harrowing . . . [ The Great Believers ] is a vivid, passionate, heart-wrenching story."
-- Wall Street Journal
"[Makkai is] stunningly versatile."
-- Harper''s Bazaar
"Makkai knits themes of loss, betrayal, friendship and survival into a powerful story of people struggling to keep their humanity in dire circumstances."
-- People Magazine
"Cultural revolutions of the past painfully reverberate in Rebecca Makkai''s deft third novel, The Great Believers , which captures both the devastation of the AIDS crisis in 1980s Chicago and the emotional aftershocks of those losses."
-- Vogue
" The Great Believers asks big questions about redemption, tragedy, and connection. Makkai has written her most ambitious novel yet."
-- Entertainment Weekly
" The Great Believers soars . . . magnificent . . . Makkai has full command of her multi-generational perspective, and by its end, The Great Believers offers a grand fusion of the past and the present, the public and the personal. It''s remarkably alive despite all the loss it encompasses."
-- Chicago Tribune
"Compulsively readable . . . a relentless engine mowing back and forth across decades, zooming in on subtlest physical and emotional nuances of dozens of characters, missing no chance to remind us what''s at stake."
-- San Francisco Chronicle
