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I was wrong about our book club picking a modern thriller
Our group usually sticks to classics, so when someone suggested "The Girl on the Train" last spring I voted against it. But after we read it, the discussion about unreliable narrators was the liveliest we've had in three years. Has anyone else had a genre pick that totally surprised your club?
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lisat601mo ago
Bet the author using present tense made it feel more urgent to us than any old classic...
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caseys301mo ago
lisat60, I actually see it the opposite way. The present tense in "The Girl on the Train" felt forced to me, like the author was trying too hard to make the story seem edgy. Classic novels like "Rebecca" or "Jane Eyre" handle unreliable narrators with way more subtlety and skill, and their past tense never slowed down the tension. I think the real energy in our discussion came from how the book made us question our own trust in people's stories, not from the writing style. Have you tried comparing it to something like "Wuthering Heights" to see how different narrators handle the same trick?
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