My book club thought the main character was a ghost for six whole months

We've been reading 'The Midnight Library' and at our meeting in March, someone mentioned how sad it was that Nora was dead the whole time. I agreed, and we spent the next few sessions talking about the book as a ghost story. The tip-off came last week when a new member, Sarah, quietly asked, 'But isn't she in a coma between life and death? The library is a metaphor.' I had to go back and re-read the first chapter, and sure enough, it's a near-death experience, not an afterlife. We'd built our entire debate on a wrong idea. Has your club ever completely misunderstood a book's basic plot?

3 comments

3 Comments

nguyen.dylan3mo ago

Remember reading about a book club that spent months analyzing a romance novel as a deep critique of capitalism because they missed the sarcasm in the opening line. It's so easy to lock onto one idea like @fisher.kevin said. I mean, your Midnight Library mix-up makes total sense, the whole setup does feel super ghostly before you get what's really going on.

fisher.kevin3mo ago

My buddy's group read a mystery novel convinced the butler did it. They spent weeks picking apart his alibi only to find out he was a red herring introduced in chapter two. Sometimes you just get a detail stuck in your head and run with it.

ray3241mo ago

Chapter two is exactly when a smart reader should start taking notes, not when you throw out info. If your boy's group spent weeks on a character introduced that early, that's on them for not reading critically. Authors don't waste page space on nothing - a butler mentioned that fast is either the killer or a major red flag, and it's the reader's job to figure out which. Mystery novels are basically puzzles, and puzzles need you to hold all the pieces, not just the shiny ones. Most of the time, the obvious suspect in chapter two is too obvious for a reason, and missing that means you're just going along for the ride instead of actually solving anything.