Always assumed a book club was just about drinking wine and chatting until I went to one that spent 40 minutes debating if the narrator in The Great Gatsby was actually reliable

My friend dragged me to their group last month and I walked in expecting low stakes opinions, but three people almost walked out over whether Nick Carraway was an honest guy or just a rich dude making excuses, and now I'm wondering if I've been reading entire novels wrong my whole life has anyone else had that moment where a debate totally flipped how you saw a book?

3 comments

3 Comments

josepha321mo ago

Wait, isn't the point that you can't trust him from the very start?

casey6821mo ago

Yeah, "can't trust him from the very start" is exactly the point. The whole setup is that he's never acting in good faith, so you're just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

phoenixb341mo ago

I gotta push back a little on "from the very start" though. The whole thing is that you DO trust him at first, that's what makes it work. You're supposed to be on his side, thinking he's the good guy, and then slowly realizing wait, he's actually the problem. If you knew from page one that he was shady it would be a totally different story. The trust has to be real for the betrayal to hit.