Our group read a book with a main character who never speaks, and it split us down the middle

We picked 'The Silent Woman' for our club in April... half of us thought the quiet protagonist was deep and sad. The other half got mad and called her boring. I was in the 'boring' camp until my friend Jane said, 'Maybe her silence is the loudest part of the story.' That made me go back and read the last chapter again, and I saw things I missed. Has your club ever had a book where the writing style itself caused a big fight?

3 comments

3 Comments

uma_baker881mo ago

Actually, that's a common mix-up but "The Silent Woman" by Janet Malcolm is a nonfiction book about the Sylvia Plath biography wars. The main character isn't silent in the story, the book itself is about whose version of Plath's life gets to be told. I can see how the name might throw people off though. Your club might have been reading something different entirely, there's a few novels out there with similar titles. Just wanted to gently point that out since the original post was about writing style causing arguments, and Malcolm's book definitely has a unique style to it. Her way of weaving journalism and personal opinion together drives some readers crazy too.

burns.richard3mo ago

Actually, "The Silent Woman" is a biography, not a novel with a quiet character.

tyler_burns663mo ago

Reminds me of a bookstore clerk who once argued with a customer about whether a book was fiction or memoir. The whole thing got heated over where it should be shelved. They nearly came to blows in the biography section. Sometimes people just dig in on the smallest details. Makes you wonder why the label matters more than the actual reading.