Viking
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Rebecca Makkai, writer of “The Nice Believers,” returns with “I Have Some Questions for You” (Viking), a New York Instances bestselling novel a few girl who examines the mysteries nonetheless surrounding the decades-old homicide of her boarding college roommate.
Learn an excerpt beneath:
“I Have Some Questions for You” by Rebecca Makkai (Hardcover)
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“You’ve got heard of her,” I say—a problem, an assurance. To the girl on the neighboring lodge barstool who’s made the error of placing up a dialog, to the dentist who runs out of questions on my children and asks what I have been as much as myself.
Generally they know her straight away. Generally they ask, “Wasn’t that the one the place the man saved her within the basement?” No! No. It was not.
Wasn’t it the one the place she was stabbed in—no. The one the place she bought in a cab with—completely different lady. The one the place she went to the frat social gathering, the one the place he used a stick, the one the place he used a hammer, the one the place she picked him up from rehab and he—no. The one the place he’d been watching her jog day-after-day? The one the place she made the error of telling him her interval was late? The one with the uncle? Wait, the opposite one with the uncle?
No: It was the one with the swimming pool. The one with the alcohol within the—together with her hair round—with the man who confessed to—proper. Sure.
They nod, comforted. By what?
My barstool neighbor pulls the celery from her Bloody Mary, crunches down. My dentist asks me to rinse. They work her title of their mouths, their reminiscences. “I undoubtedly know that one,” they are saying.
“That one,” as a result of what’s she now however a narrative, a narrative to know or not know, a narrative with a restricted set of particulars, a narrative to grasp by memorizing maps and timelines.
“The one from the boarding college!” they are saying. “I bear in mind, the one from the video. You knew her?”
She’s the one whose photograph pops up in the event you search New Hampshire homicide, alongside mug pictures from the meth-addled tragedies of newer years. One photograph—her laughing together with her mouth however not her eyes, suggesting some deep unhappiness—tends to characteristic in clickbait. It is only a cropped shot of the tennis crew from the yearbook; in the event you knew Thalia it is easy to see she wasn’t truly upset, was merely smiling for the digital camera when she did not really feel prefer it.
It was the story that bought instructed and retold.
It was the one the place she was younger sufficient and white sufficient and fairly sufficient and wealthy sufficient that individuals paid consideration.
It was the one the place we have been all younger sufficient to suppose somebody smarter had the solutions.
Perhaps it was the one we bought improper.
Perhaps it was the one all of us, collectively, every bearing solely the load of a feather, bought improper.
From “I Have Some Questions For You” by Rebecca Makkai, printed by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random Home LLC. Copyright © 2023 by Rebecca Makkai Freeman.
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“I Have Some Questions for You” by Rebecca Makkai (Hardcover)
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