Book Club

Book Club’s next read is ‘I Have Some Questions For You’ by Rebecca Makkai

Join the live author discussion with Becky Dayton, owner of The Vermont Book Shop, on April 25, at 6 p.m.

April 3, 2023

Our April Boston.com Book Club selection is “I Have Some Questions For You” by Rebecca Makkai. The book was only released at the end of February and it’s already been on the New York Times bestseller list for five weeks. That’s another way of saying that this is one of the “it” books of the young year.

This is not a new phenomenon for Makkai. Her prior three novels – “The Borrower,” “The Hundred-Year House,” and “The Great Believers” — and her book of short stories, “Music for Wartime,” were all also critical darlings. So it is with “I Have Some Questions For You.” It was named one of the most anticipated books of 2023 by NPR, Time, USA Today, Newsweek, The Millions, Elle, and several others. In her review for The Boston Globe, Priscilla Gilman called the book “the most irresistible literary page-turner I have read in years.” Reviews from The New York Times Book Review, People, San Francisco Chronicle, Wall St. Journal, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and on and on and on, have been similarly complimentary in their reviews. Makkai’s prior book, “The Great Believers,” garnered similar praise in 2018 – it was a runner-up for The Pulitzer Prize, a finalist for The National Book Award, and was named one of The New York Times’ 10 Best Books of 2018. While it’s been five years since that book, it’s clear that Makkai has not lost her fastball.

The book is centered at a fictional New Hampshire boarding school. The book’s protagonist, podcaster and professor Bodie Kane, is lured back to her old boarding school for a short-term teaching gig, and she accepts despite having never wanted to dredge up this part of her life. Senior year, her roommate was murdered, and she was instrumental in helping secure a murder conviction. But as she falls down the rabbit hole of her memories thanks to one of her students, who starts a true crime podcast about the murder, Bodie wonders if maybe she – and everyone else – was wrong.

To say that the book pulls on this one narrative thread would be an extreme injustice. As Gilman said in her review, “Makkai tackles thorny questions about the media, the law, gender, race, and class.” But the fictional Granby School is at the story’s center. As Katy Waldman wrote in her review of the book at The New Yorker, “What distinguishes Makkai’s turn is her detective framing: she understands that every high school, with its indelible characters and astronomical-seeming stakes, is a crime scene.”

A school that featured prominently in Makkai’s writing journey was Middlebury College, where she earned a master’s degree from the Bread Loaf School of English. So it’s very appropriate that our bookseller partner who will join Rebecca for this conversation will be Becky Dayton, owner of The Vermont Book Shop. The store has been a fixture in downtown Middlebury since 1949. Nestled on Main St. and just a quick hop over Otter Creek from Middlebury College, it is a picturesque spot in a charming, small college town. Dayton has owned it since 2005, when she purchased it from the original owners.

Join Rebecca and Becky on Tuesday, April 25th, at 6 p.m., as they discuss Rebecca’s remarkable new novel!

Buy “I Have Some Questions For You” from: Bookshop | The Vermont Book Shop