That book club week where everyone brought a different genre to the same story

Last month our group read "The Night Circus" and three people showed up with completely different interpretations - one saw it as a romance, another as a fantasy thriller, and this one guy argued it was really about capitalism. We spent almost 45 minutes just on the first chapter because nobody could agree on what genre we were even debating. Has your book club ever had a night where the same book felt like five different stories to different people?

2 comments

2 Comments

juliam405d ago

That guy arguing about capitalism sounds exhausting. My old group read a mystery novel once and someone insisted it was actually a metaphor for the author's divorce. We had to stop and ask her to point to any actual proof in the text. She got quiet after that. Sometimes people just want to be deep when the book is really just a fun story.

rubyj114d ago

Is it bad that I've been that person before? lol I once spent a whole 20 minutes in my book club explaining how a red herring in a thriller was actually a symbol for unresolved childhood trauma. The author literally said in an interview it was just a red herring because they needed a distraction. My friend still brings it up when I start getting too analytical about stuff. So yeah, I get it. Sometimes a mystery novel is just about who stole the necklace, not a commentary on the capitalist patriarchy lmao.