I Have Some Questions For You

This was a twisty, TWISTY mystery, which it is at its core. Its about figuring out who really committed a crime, which makes it a mystery. But it's also about memory, and how memory works. We think we remember a story right, but then something will come up that will change everything. Maybe it???s something we notice in the moment, or that someone tells you in the moment. Or it might be a realization, almost a bolt out of the blue, years and years later, that changes the way a memory looks to us. This change of perception can catalyze out of anything - that???s why it???s like a bolt out of the blue sometimes. But that one moment can change SO MUCH.

Memory is unreliable, but how else do we define who we are as people? How else to we make sense of our past, our present, our future? How else do we move forward in life, if not by telling ourselves ???This is what happened??? and just. Labeling that as the truth, even if the truth is always hazier and less objective than we can ever imagine?

Another thing this looks at is how true crime works as a genre. True crime's immense popularity has since opened up ethical concerns regarding amateur sleuths/journalists poking around, looking for answers, thinking they can save the world. Which, I guess is great, it???s that kind of hope that changes lives, but there???s also a lot of complications around it that need to be addressed. There???s the white saviorism angle for instance, especially in cases where the perceived victim/s are PoC. True crime podcast creators and fans are OVERWHELMINGLY white, so there???s an element of white saviorism here that needs to be addressed ethically.

Then there???s the the sensationalism of what are, in fact, deeply traumatizing, life-changing events for the people involved. While true crime can be edifying, and can even help raise awareness for cases where there have been miscarriages of justice and then set everything on the path to being made right, the fact remains that it is also spectacle, entertainment, THE REDUCTION OF AWFUL THINGS INTO CONTENT TO BE CONSUMED. There needs to be a way to grapple with that, a way to address it because it???s just not good to go digging IN OTHER PEOPLE???S LIVES just for the sake of clicks and viewer counts and downloads.

And then there???s the #MeToo layer of this novel, which ties right up with the true crime angle. Men have been doing awful, awful things to women for most of human history, and it has always been difficult to hold them accountable. #MeToo was an attempt, and in some ways it was successful, but even then it can be hard for the victims to come forward because of the backlash they can get on the internet. That shit can and does ruin lives - look what happened to Amber Heard. This novel also gets at the systemic issues that created #MeToo in the first place: how men (especially rich white men) are allowed to get away with damn near anything, and how that indoctrination starts when they???re boys.

I also want to point out the general unreliability of the narrator - which folds into all the points I mentioned above. When you???re talking about memory and crime and finding the truth, you have to remember that bias will play a role in any story that???s told. When you engage with true crime anything, you???re hearing a story AS FILTERED THROUGH SOMEONE ELSE???S BIASES. The story you're being told MIGHT be true, but there???s always going to be some kind of slant based on the things they leave in, the things they leave out, or even the way they present the things they actually leave in.

So overall, this book was an intense ride: the mystery is, I think, especially well-done, with the unreliable narrator's biases creating space for some interesting twists and turns that lead to an ending that???s inconclusive, but makes immense sense when viewed alongside the rest of the true crime genre. Its most powerful theme, though, is about memory: how it can be distorted, how it can shift and change and mutate depending on any number of reasons - and how, along with that shift, our entire selves can shift, because memory is tied up with who we are and how we view ourselves, and when the shifts are tectonic, the changes can ripple out into the way we live our lives in the present, and on into the future.