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Rant: My book club spent 45 minutes arguing if the narrator was unreliable or just dumb
We were reading that thriller where the main character keeps making bad choices. Half the group said she was an unreliable narrator, the other half said she was just a dumb person making dumb choices. I sat there timing it on my phone. 45 minutes. Nobody changed their mind. The host finally had to cut off the debate just to get to snacks. Has anyone else had a book club argument turn into a total time suck? How do you keep it from happening?
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ellis.jennifer18d ago
Got into a debate once about whether the main character in Gone Girl was "crazy" or just smart. That one went on for over an hour at my book club. People were bringing up specific scenes and reading quotes out loud to prove their point. It got so heated that two people almost left early. The thing is, nobody ever agrees on stuff like that because there's no right answer. I started setting a timer for 15 minutes on debate topics after that. When the timer goes off, we vote and move on, no exceptions. It keeps things from turning into a whole thing.
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oliviapatel18d ago
Okay but I actually think there IS a right answer, or at least a more solid one. Amy is definitely smart, sure, but calling her "just smart" kind of lets her off the hook for being genuinely unhinged. She literally framed her own husband for murder, faked a pregnancy, and then killed someone who was trying to help her. That's not just a smart move, that's a calculated psychopath move. I get that it's fun to debate but I think people get so caught up in her being clever that they forget she's ALSO dangerous and crazy. They're not mutually exclusive, you know?
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