Finally cracked the code on my book club's debate about unreliable narrators

We were stuck arguing whether the narrator in 'The Gone Girl' was lying or just crazy for like 3 meetings. Then I printed out a simple timeline of events from the book with page numbers so we could track what we actually knew vs what we assumed. It totally settled the fight and now we're doing it for our current pick too. Has anyone else tried mapping out a book's timeline to stop circular debates?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_piper29d ago

Wait, someone actually got mad about a timeline being "biased"? That's wild! Like, it's literally just dates and page numbers from the book they all agreed on, right? How do you argue with something you can all look up and verify together? Honestly, I think that guy was just looking for a fight no matter what you did. Some people just can't handle being wrong, I guess.

jamie_white29d ago

Finally cracked the code" is right. My friend Sarah tried that with her book club and it backfired. She made a timeline and one guy got so defensive about being wrong he started a whole new fight about whether the timeline itself was biased. Sometimes you can't win with those groups.