Our book club spent 6 weeks debating one word in a chapter title

We were reading a literary fiction novel and got stuck on whether the author meant "sanctuary" ironically or literally in chapter 4. Half the group swore it was a metaphor for trauma, the other half said it was just describing a church. We spent three full meetings going back and forth, looked up interviews with the author, and even emailed the publisher. Got a generic reply from an intern 4 weeks later that basically said "interpret it how you want." Has anyone else had a single phrase or word derail your entire book club discussion for that long?

2 comments

2 Comments

ninaross9d ago

Oh man, our group did something similar with the word "drift" in a short story collection. Half of us thought it meant emotional distance between characters, the other half was convinced it was literally about a car drifting on a road. We spent two meetings arguing and finally found out the author wrote it while on a road trip and just liked the sound of the word. The publisher intern reply thing is so real though, it's like they have a template for "we don't actually know either." Maybe that's the point of literary fiction, you know, to make you obsess over stuff the author didn't even plan.

kelly_coleman619d ago

Ha, @ninaross your story reminds me of when my book club argued for an hour whether "blue" was a metaphor until someone pointed out the author just liked the color of their coffee mug!