#26. I Have Some Questions For You
Some thoughts on true crime inspired by Rebecca Makkai’s fourth novel
Hey! This issue contains extremely light spoilers for “I Have Some Questions For You” by Rebecca Makkai. I gave it a 6/10 if that helps you decide whether you want to read it or not. If you do want to read it, I would just skip the last few paragraphs of this essay, or come back to this issue after you’re finished.
The very first piece of true crime media I ever consumed was Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. One of my closest friends in college was dangerously close to failing one of her classes in our last semester before graduating, and she had to write some kind of paper on the book. I remember getting home to our shared house off campus one evening, and there she was curled up on the couch, panicking because she hadn’t even started writing yet, and the paper was due the next day. I immediately grabbed the book and started reading at warp speed, pitching ideas for her essay deep into the night. It was the one and only time I had ever pulled anything close to an “all-nighter” in college, and it wasn’t even for my own benefit, lol. Anything to do with books, though, and you know I felt it was well worth it.
I remember loving In Cold Blood so much I asked to borrow it, and then read it again at normal speed over the next few days. It was absolutely captivating in a completely horrible way, and I still consider it one of the best non-fiction novels I’ve ever read. It didn’t exactly spark an obsession with the true crime genre for me, but around four years later, when season one of “Serial” came out, I listened.
Along with pretty much everybody else, I was totally enthralled by the 1999 murder of a high school girl, Hae Min Lee, who was found dead in a woodland park in Baltimore after she had been missing for four weeks. I remember listening to it while driving the eight hours from Los Angeles to Tucson, probably for Thanksgiving or Christmas in 2015, and being so invested in the story that I immediately absconded to my room after I arrived at my parent’s house and administered rushed hello hugs so I could finish the last episode.
The victim’s ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, went to prison in 2000 after being tried and found guilty for her murder, but it was abundantly clear by the end of 12 episodes that “Serial’s” host, Sarah Koenig (an investigative journalist who made TIME’s “The 100 Most Influential People” list in 2015), wasn’t at all sure Syed was guilty. She only knew that the case against him was shitty. And sure enough, eight years after the “Serial” podcast premiered, Syed went free last September after 23 years in prison when prosecutors decided there were other other suspects they didn’t look enough into back in 1999, and that unreliable evidence was used in the case.
It’s hard not to draw comparisons from season one of “Serial” and Adnan Syed’s story to Rebecca Makkai’s latest book, I Have Some Questions For You. Makkai is a seasoned true crime fan, and she wrote a “literary feminist boarding school murder mystery” about a shitty case that was put together against a youngish person of color for the murder of a high school girl in New Hampshire, and her novel provides plenty of commentary on the popularity/public nature of true crime media, which really exploded with season one of “Serial”. Makkai’s main character, Bodie Kane, is even the host of a very successful investigative podcast (and although it’s never said specifically, we agreed that Bodie was likely intended to be Jewish, like Sarah Koenig herself). Though pretty much everyone I’ve talked to about “Serial” has reported loving it, my book club’s reaction to our May pick was much more varied.
Our individual ratings of I Have Some Questions For You ranged from a 1-8 out of 10, which is maybe the widest range for a book club book I’ve ever seen in my long career as an avid book club junkie. We of course made Alex, the person who rated the book a 1/10, give a short and impassioned presentation complete with Powerpoint slides on her distaste for the book, and she happily obliged. (She found basically all the characters to be annoying or underdeveloped, and as a lawyer, found the handling of the retrial to be extremely unrealistic.) It was an absolute delight. On average, we rated the book a decidedly unimpressionable 5.5.
As a group of women roughly between the ages of 26-36 (according to a few different sources, this is right in the sweet spot for true crime fans), you might expect our book club to have more lovers of true crime in it. About half of us reported being totally uninterested in the genre (one person even said she is extremely turned-off by the genre because it’s too scary), and only one or two people would count themselves as actual fans. Still, we voted on and ultimately chose I Have Some Questions For You as our May book because everyone I know who likes books seems to be talking about it, and so many of us were fans of Makkai’s previous novel, The Great Believers (which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and made me cry ugly tears).
A full 50% of Americans report that they enjoy true crime, and 13% say it’s their favorite genre. When I polled Instagram on Monday, 29% of you reported loving true crime, 43% were somewhat casual consumers, and only 27% said you weren’t into true crime at all. I’m sure you already knew before today that the true crime audience skews female, so given that my Instagram analytics tell me my followers are 96.3% women, that tracks. It seems that women may be drawn to true crime because we want to learn something from it, and there is a relatability that exists for us when we consume these stories because the victims of violent crime (at least those that get a lot of coverage in the media) are often female or other minorities. Some true crime fans might enjoy the genre because they learn specific, actionable tips they can use to better protect themselves, while others may enjoy it more for the ability to get really close to violence and danger without actually experiencing it firsthand. Some of this seems like it may apply to fictional stories in the crime/murder mystery genre, like Rebecca Makkai’s latest novel, and some of it does not. I think it’s up to each person to really think about their own consumption of stories about murder on a deeper level to understand what we do/do not get out of it individually.
An obvious criticism of true crime is that it exploits real-life victims and their families for profit. It also may be making consumers of the genre really paranoid. And though true crime also consistently shines a spotlight on the flaws of the American criminal justice system which has the potential to lead to actual reform, it also tends to focus on violence against white women, even though men of color are actually more likely to be the victims of violent crime.
My bigger question is: As the general perception that the United States seems to be getting more violent increases, will the interest in true crime also increase? Or, will we eventually reach a tipping point where the genre begins to hit a little too close to home for most, and interest in true crime media will begin to wane? And how does the overturning of Roe v. Wade fit into this? In an era where women’s rights seem to be slowly sliding backwards, will we eventually begin to say “enough” to hearing real stories about women being murdered over and over again?
I’ll admit to being a casual consumer of true crime media–one that has admittedly lost interest in the genre slowly over the past few years. After “Serial,” I also binged (and loved) “In The Dark,” “Dr. Death,” and “Dirty John.” For a few years before the pandemic, I was an extremely devoted listener of “The Last Podcast on the Left,” which is true crime but also comedy, which is a disturbing-yet-somehow-delightful spin on the genre. I slowed my consumption of true crime stories in 2020 during the pandemic because it was all just way too much.
While I think there is some truth to enjoying the genre because I feel like I am being educated on how to possibly escape a deadly future scenario, I think I am personally more interested in true crime because I like to play detective. I’ve always been a problem solver with an interest in psychology, and I like how the true crime genre explores the complexities of human nature, coming up with endless possibilities for how something *could* have happened.
In I Have Some Questions For You, Makkai imagines nine different hypotheses for how Thalia Keith might have been murdered, and I could have used around 90 more. In many ways, these little vignettes share a lot of commonalities with one of my most beloved genres: speculative fiction. It’s a genre where writers flex their creativity and ask what might have happened / what could happen and why; coloring in all the little details to make a convincing case for something that could conceivably happen either in the past, present, or future. I wish I Have Some Questions For You would have leaned on this narrative device more, because I found it the single most interesting part of the entire novel.
When someone from book club asked if anyone else had watched “The Staircase” documentary, I raised my hand and immediately asked if she was a fellow owl theorist. I don’t usually talk about specific true crime stories with anyone and I guess I kind of thought most people were owl theorists(?!?!?) which turns out not to be at all the case, haha. But I love this totally unexpected, out-of-the-box explanation–that Kathleen Peterson was actually attacked by a barred owl outside her home in 2001, not murdered by her husband, Michael. It’s a much more interesting explanation than following the usual trope that the husband or boyfriend did it, even if that typically reflects reality.
I guess that explains why my all-time favorite episodes of “The Last Podcast on the Left” were all about the Donner Party (i.e. cannibalism) and why I was left unsatisfied by I Have Some Questions For You. There were just soooooooooo many ways the book could have ended in a more interesting way–one person in our book club was *convinced* that the narrator’s best friend was the killer, which would have been FANTASTIC–yet so many stones were left unturned, if we’re speaking purely from a place of speculative creativity.
So now, I have some questions for you. What did you think of Rebecca Makkai’s fourth novel, especially the ending? Do you enjoy true crime? Do you think true crime is problematic? What do you predict will happen to our obsession with true crime in the next one, five, and ten years?
Is our interest in true crime just a symptom of a country that glorifies violence? Or is it part of the problem?
This week, I have no “What’s Up This Week” to share because I’ve been extremely busy and was also on vacation for Paul’s birthday this past weekend. I had to sprint through the ENTIRE length of the Minneapolis/St.Paul airport at 6:00am on our way there last Friday, which really made it clear to me how badly I need to start doing cardio again. I read one book while on the beach in Florida, Out There by Kate Folk, which was definitely very weird (like the name suggests) and I’ll share some thoughts on it in two weeks.
Please accept these trip photos and a quick story as an apology! One afternoon we saw some manatees fucking, and let me tell you–that was an experience. A bunch of people rushed over and crowded them for hours, taking selfies and shit with the manatees during what is essentially a gang bang, though thankfully not in a true crime way. Obviously we looked it up. One woman was so upset that people were trying to touch the manatees that she called the police, or the coast guard, or whoever’s job it is to come regulate during a manatee orgy. That shit was wild!
K bye,
Kelly
P.S. Last week I wrote about finding my wedding shoes. They are blue!!