Published by
The Seattle Times
The Seattle Times
“Every novel is a mystery,” said author Rebecca Makkai, on the phone from her home outside Chicago. “It’s a mystery about the future — what’s going to happen next — which is most books. Or maybe a mystery about the present: what’s really going on here, who am I really. Or maybe a mystery about the past: what already happened here, what I am looking at. That kind of mystery seemed to fit best with a story that was going to be fundamentally about someone looking back at their time at a boarding school.” Makkai, whose 2018 novel, “The Great Believers,” won multiple awards including the ALA Carneg…