The Book Club in Flint That Read the Whole Backlist

Last winter a book club in Flint decided to read everything I have written, in publication order, over four months. Twelve people. Two novels, a story collection, and a short book of essays that I had more or less made peace with nobody reading.

Then they sent me eleven pages of notes.

What they noticed that I had not

The first thing in the document was a list of every time a character makes a phone call they do not want to make. There were nineteen. I had no idea. They had built a small taxonomy of them — calls avoided, calls made too late, calls answered by the wrong person — and used it to argue that the real subject of the work is not family, which is what the jacket copy says, but obligation.

They are right. It took a reading group in Michigan to explain my own preoccupation to me, which is either humbling or exactly how this is supposed to work.

Writers know what they intended. Readers know what is actually on the page. Those are different documents and only one of them is the book.

The disagreements

They did not agree with each other, which was the best part. Two members thought the ending of the second novel was a cop-out. Four defended it. The notes recorded both positions with the fairness of a court transcript, and the dissent was more useful than the praise.

One line, from a member named Denise: "I did not believe he would go back, and I did not need him to. I needed the book to admit he might not." That sentence has been sitting in my drafts folder for months. It is a better articulation of what I got wrong than anything my editor or I managed at the time.

How the club works

They have a few practices worth stealing:

• One book, one month, no exceptions, even when people fall behind. Falling behind is allowed; skipping the meeting is not.
• Everyone brings one line they marked, and reads it aloud before any discussion starts. It sets the room to the register of the prose rather than the plot.
• The last fifteen minutes are for objections only. Nothing but complaints. It gives people permission to be honest late, after the enthusiasm has been aired.

An open offer

I joined their final session by video and stayed an hour past the scheduled end, mostly listening. If your club is reading anything of mine and wants half an hour on a call, write to me. I cannot say yes to everything, but I have never regretted saying yes to this.

To the Flint group: the third novel has a phone call in it that would not exist without your notes. You will know it when you get there.