I was intrigued by the description of this book because it reminded me of Adnan's Story which I recently read. The story of Adnan Syed's arrest, trial, and life sentence for the murder of a classmate was made famous on the Serial podcast. Because of the publicity brought on by the podcast, Syed's case was re-opened and he was subsequently found innocent.
Makkai's book is a novel with a very similar plot. A young girl is found dead in her boarding school swimming pool and suspicions are on Omar Evans, an athletic trainer at the school. Omar is found guilty and a former student, Bodie Kane (a podcaster) brings new light to the crime many years later. Bodie questions whether the wrong person has been jailed.
Bodie has returned to Granby School to teach a winter intersession on podcasting, when some of her students decide to do a podcast on Thalia Keith's murder, they start exploring new suspects, and ask new questions.
The school library is mentioned a few times. For instance: as a place to look up the word "lusty" in a dictionary, before one could simply go to dictionary.com to discover that it meant "healthy and strong; full of vigor"; as a place to do research back in a time when students didn't all have their own computers; a place where old yearbooks can be found; or where a schoolgirl in 1995 could borrow a map of Connecticut to find the location of the street in New Canaan where her crush lived.
The library held a special place in the history of the Granby school. Started in 1814 a young woman Arsareth Gage founded the school with twelve boys as students in a small schoolhouse. Samuel Granby built the library and chapel six years later. Ultimately Samuel Granby became a sugar daddy to the entire town.
For those on the lookout for Easter Eggs regarding the Syed case, Makkai includes a reference to "the girl whose boyfriend was definitely not working at LensCrafters that day".
No comments:
Post a Comment