RFBC #12: I Have Some Questions For You (and a link to the show)
Rebecca Makkai, author of I Have Some Questions For You, has called it “a literary feminist boarding school murder mystery.”
Hoo, boy. There’s a lot there. It’s definitely a boarding school murder mystery, in that it’s set at a boarding school where there was a murder that the guy who got put away for it may or may not have committed. We had some further questions about those first two adjectives, though. And, frankly, some disagreements.
Which always makes for a delightfully contentious meeting of Radio Free Book Club, and you can listen to it right this very minute on Mixcloud or wherever you stream podcasts. Please consider: There will be spoilers in this post and on that podcast, and it is a murder mystery, so don’t say we didn’t warn you. Come back when you want to debate literary merit, etc.
Show notes:
The RFBC crew for our June 2023 show was Indianapolis writer Ken Honeywell; writer/baker/hiker Traci Cumbay; and opinionated, excellent Indiana writers Alex Mattingly and Jen Bingham. Our show was recorded at Listen Hear in Indianapolis and produced by the one and only Oreo Jones for 99.1 WQRT-LP.
Is it literary? It certainly has a literary pedigree. Rebecca Makkai’s previous novel The Great Believers, was nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Ken was the only one who’d read that book, and thought highly of it. Alex said he’d read The Borrower, Makkai’s 2011 novel, and remembered liking it. So whether this one is literary or not, it’s probably not going to be found in the mystery ghetto at the bookstore.
Is it feminist? Well…it is certainly concerned with issues like sexual harassment and assault, and with power imbalances in relationships, some of which are definitely inappropriate (Denny Bloch and his teenage students) and some of which may or may not be (Jerome Wager/Jasmine Wilde). Still, we wondered whether these plot elements or the issues they raised made the novel feminist. We voted no.
What is it with boarding school novels, anyway? Most of us expressed some affinity for boarding school novels, but we were all disappointed, to some degree, by Granby. Alex didn’t think it seemed special enough, especially compared with Chilton Preparatory School in Gilmore girls. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History was also mentioned several times throughout the show, and apparently we weren’t the only ones making that comparison. The author has allegedly made it a point to mention that The Secret History is a college novel, not a boarding school novel.
Still, we get it. Students, murder, in the woods, in New England. We all thought Makkai’s novel suffered in comparison. None of us thought the characters were particularly well drawn, and the setting didn’t seem as fully realized.
“Dear Mr. Bloch: What did you think of the fact that Bodie essentially addressed the entire narrative to you?” Traci was puzzled. Alex and Jen found it intriguing, but both decided that, on closer inspection, it didn’t make sense. Ken thought it was a good hook, and the idea that it was written to Denny Bloch wasn’t a distraction. It certainly showcased Bodie’s growing realization that Bloch was having an inappropriate relationship with Thalia. And he split for Bulgaria the year after Thalia’s murder.
Is Bodie an unreliable narrator? Now that Jen Bingham put it that way…yeah, maybe she was. Shrewd observation, Jen.
We loved the name of Bodie’s podcast. Starlet Fever. Classic. Jen pointed out its similarity to a podcast whose name she couldn’t remember. Later, offline, she shared that she’d been thinking of Karina Longworth’s You Must Remember This.
Overall, we were really split. The book pushed all the right buttons for Jen. She especially liked how well Makkai treated the story of Omar’s wrongful conviction, the bleak reality of prison, and the slim likelihood of ever being able to get out, even with new evidence that casts doubt on the verdict. On the flip side, Traci found Bodie to be especially tedious and failed to find much of anything to like at all. Ken appreciated the theme of how quick we are to judge others based on only the most superficial exposure to them. On that note, Alex struggled with the fact that Bodie never internalizes this lesson—that she clearly decides, based on circumstantial evidence, that Robbie Serenho was Thalia’s killer. We as readers come away with that impression, too. Does that contradict the theme of the book? Or does it support it? And/or: See Jen Bingham’s observation about Bodie the unreliable narrator.
None of us loved the last scene. Carlotta was a minor character, not someone we particularly knew or cared about. Her death did not move us, and Alex was especially puzzled as to why, after some of what she’d experienced at Granby, she’d want to have (an eighth of) her ashes spread there.
Would we recommend it? Alex hemmed and hawed for a few seconds, but ultimately had enough problems with the novel that he wouldn’t recommend it. Jen loved it. Traci gave it a big no. Ken had some reservations and didn’t love it the way Jen did, but enjoyed it and would recommend it.
Bonus recommendations: Alex recommended Leigh Stein’s 2020 satirical novel Self Care (which he read in a day). Jen recommended the latest season of the Serial podcast: The Coldest Case in Laramie, hosted by New York Times reporter Kim Barker. Traci recommended Harold by Steven Wright, which she is “one hundred percent sure is a book about Steven Wright.” Ken recommended Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (which Jen hated, but couldn’t stop thinking about).
Next month: We’ll be dealing with radical Kiwi gardeners and the world’s evilest billionaire as we bring Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood to you.
