I was leading our club's talk on 'The Goldfinch' and realized I'd been reading it wrong for years.

We were talking about the Las Vegas section, and a new member, Sarah, said she saw Theo's time there as him being completely lost, not just rebelling. I'd always focused on the art theft plot, but she pointed out a line about the desert sky feeling like a 'dome of forgetting' that I'd skimmed over. It made me rethink the whole book's theme of memory. Has anyone else had a club moment that flipped a book for them?

3 comments

3 Comments

olivia_allen12d ago

My friend totally missed the point of The Great Gatsby until her book club pointed out how much the green light really meant... she said it felt like reading a whole new book after that.

julia_miller2412d ago

That's interesting, but I always thought the green light was way too obvious. The real point gets lost if you only focus on that one symbol. What about how Gatsby keeps trying to repeat the past, you know? That's the part that actually makes the book sad.

nora_dixon2h ago

But @julia_miller24 the green light is the whole reason he wants the past back.