"I Have Some Questions for You" by Rebecca Makkai Take a pinch of"Prep," the boarding-school drama by Curtis Sittenfeld. Add a dollop of"My Dark Vanessa," Kate Elizabeth Russell's story about a teenage girl's sexual relationship with her high school teacher. Season with a smidge of"Serial," the true crime podcast that went viral. Then finish it off with a juicy #MeToo scandal.
Should your book club read it? The answer likely depends on whether you prefer novels that emphasize plot or character. Makkai, a lyrical writer whose last book was the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist"The Great Believers," has gone all-in on the former with intricate plot twists and a major red herring.
When the novel begins, Bodie has been invited back to the elite New England boarding school she attended in the 1990s as a scholarship student to teach a course on podcasting. Vaguely troubled by the murder of a former roommate, the beautiful, popular, privileged and white Thalia, she suggests that her students might want to look into it.
As her students dig into the case, she revisits her more than 20-year-old memories and wonders if perhaps she got some things wrong. Were the cool kids really not as cool as she thought they were? Was it possible that Denny Bloch, the charismatic music teacher she revered, was a sexual predator who was grooming Thalia and may in fact have killed her? The narrative is ostensibly addressed to Mr. Bloch and Bodie, as the title suggests, has a whole lot of questions for him.