It took me forever to read Rebecca Makkai’s novel I Have Some Questions For You, but that does not speak to the book’s subject matter or quality – both of which are terrific, and should have been right up my alley.

Bodie Kane, a film professor and podcaster, is offered the opportunity to teach a mini-semester (two weeks) on podcasting at Granby School, the private New England high school she spent four not altogether happy years of her life. Her feelings about Granby are further complicated by her memories of Thalia Keith, her roommate who was murdered during their senior year. Omar Evans, the school’s athletic trainer, is currently serving life in prison for the crime, despite maintaining his innocence. Bodie is somewhat reluctant to return but, she “wanted to see if I could do it–if, despite my nerves, my almost adolescent panic, I was ready to measure myself against the girl who’d slouched her way through Granby.”

One of the students in her class wants to re-examine the crime, and Bodie finds herself sucked back into the past. As her student, Britt, takes another look at the scant evidence used to convict Omar, Bodie begins to consider the crime and the people involved from the distance of the 23 years which have passed since she graduated.

I Have Some Questions for You is not a thriller in the commercial sense of the word. It is written in the first person, almost like a letter to one of Bodie’s former teachers, a person she becomes increasing suspicious of as time goes on. It’s slow moving, especially in part one. There are also other things going on in Bodie’s life, an ex-husband who is accused of inappropriate sexual advances and the Twitter fallout which wraps its ugly arms around Bodie, Covid, and a stalled relationship with a handsome lawyer. The second half definitely picks up.

I think I found it slow going just because of the way I read it–a pause in the middle while I visited my kids–and so it’s definitely not a question of the book’s pedigree. I finished feeling wholly satisfied. It’s a compelling, well-written mystery with lots to say about our fascination with true crime, the fetishization of victims and how, sometimes, justice just isn’t served.