Our book club spent 3 hours debating whether the narrator was reliable and I think everyone missed the point

Last Tuesday we met at Carol's place in Portland to discuss "The Silent Patient" and the whole conversation went down the same rabbit hole about whether the therapist was lying from page one. I sat there for 3 hours listening to people argue about plot twists and hidden clues, but nobody talked about the bigger thing. The book is about how we refuse to hear people when they try to tell us what they actually need. Everyone was so busy playing detective they ignored that the main character literally said what she wanted out loud and the people around her kept deciding she meant something else. Has anyone else had a book club session where the group got so caught up in solving the mystery they missed the actual theme staring them in the face?

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karen_sanchez104d ago

Our group had the same thing happen with "Gone Girl". We got so caught up in who did what that we never talked about how the book was really about performance and how people show different sides to different people. I finally had to stop everyone and ask them to describe the characters' actual needs instead of their actions, and that's when the conversation got good. Sometimes you gotta just steer the group back to the why instead of the what. Sounds like Carol's crew could use a gentle nudge like that next time.