12
Our book club spent 45 minutes arguing about whether the main character actually saw a ghost or just had bad pizza
I brought it up as a joke at first because in chapter three she eats this sketchy gas station slice right before the spooky stuff starts. But then Janet went on this whole rant about how the author used specific lighting cues that only make sense if it was real. Mike pulled out his phone and started reading reviews from a literary journal that said it was 'ambiguous by design.' My friend Sarah counted how many times the word 'shadow' appears before vs after the pizza scene. We never even got to the actual discussion questions on the handout. The moderator just gave up at 9 PM and told us to read the next book a week early. Has anyone else had a side argument totally derail your whole meeting?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
the_jana19d ago
Oh man, that's gold. Clark, you're totally right though, half the time people just want something to fight about. But honestly, the pizza theory has some legs if you think about it. Like, the author made a point to mention the gas station pizza had "glowing orange grease" and then later the ghost is described as having an "amber hue." That's not subtle, that's a setup. I bet if you went back and counted words like "stomach" and "vision" the whole thing would be even more obvious. Next thing you know your book club is gonna need a forensic linguist just to decide if someone ate bad dairy.
10
45 minutes on pizza versus ghosts sounds like a group of people who just really wanted to argue. Maybe next time pick a book where the debate is about literally anything other than a dinner choice.
6