I Have Some Questions for You: A Novel

The riveting new novel from 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 1995 murder of a classmate, Thalia Keith. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia’s death and the conviction of the school’s athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are the subject of intense fascination online, Bodie prefers—needs—to let sleeping dogs lie.

But when The Granby School invites her back to teach a two-week course, Bodie finds herself inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. 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.

One of the most acclaimed contemporary American writers, Rebecca Makkai reinvents herself with each of her brilliant works of fiction. Both a transfixing mystery and a deeply felt examination of one woman's reckoning with her past, I Have Some Questions for You is her finest achievement yet.

Rebecca Makkai’s last novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the Clark Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and it was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times. Her other books are the novels The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime—four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca is on the MFA faculties of the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and Northwestern University, and is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago.

Moderator Michael Lowenthal is the author four novels—The Same Embrace, Avoidance, Charity Girl, and The Paternity Test—and a story collection, Sex with Strangers. His shorter work has appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, the New York Times Magazine, Guernica, and The Southern Review. The recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf writers’ conference, the MacDowell Colony, and the Mass Cultural Council, he lives in Boston and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University.

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EVENT ACCESSIBILITY

This event will take place on the 2nd floor of Coolidge Corner Theatre, which is accessible by stair or elevator. Wheelchair spaces are available in the theater. ASL interpretation may be provided (based on the availability of interpreters) but must be requested at least 2 weeks in advance of the event. Seats are general admission (first come, first served). Please email us at tickets@brooklinebooksmith.com as soon as possible if you require ASL interpretation, a guaranteed seat location, a wheelchair space, or other accommodations. We will do our best to serve your needs!