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Got shut down for defending a flawed protagonist in my book club meeting last Tuesday
I was at the Johnson County Library meeting for our monthly fiction group last Tuesday and brought up why I still liked the main character even though she made awful choices. Everyone said I was excusing bad behavior but I think a character can be messy and still worth reading about. Has anyone else had a book club get weirdly moralistic about a protagonist?
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price.gavin20h ago
My buddy Mark got the same treatment at his book club over in Overland Park last month. They were reading My Year of Rest and Relaxation and he said he found the main character kind of funny, not just a total trainwreck. The host's wife went on a ten minute lecture about how he was "normalizing self-destruction" and asked if he'd recommend the book to his teenage niece. Mark just sat there drinking his wine and said "I'd recommend it to anyone who likes books, she doesn't need to be a role model." They didn't invite him back for the next meeting about Piranesi.
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