Book Club talk: We Begin at the End

 

Yesterday, I attended a book club at my local library where we discussed the book We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker. It took place in a good sized board room on the second floor of the library, where everyone gathered around a conference table. I arrived 5 minutes late, as I tend to do, and was surprised to find that the table was full of ladies on time and ready to discuss! Not a man in sight, for some reason. They readily made space for me to scoot a chair in, and we went around introducing ourselves and a general “whether or not” we liked the book. There weren’t any refreshments provided, but there is a café in the library and a few people brought a coffee from there.

 Amusingly, most of us agreed that it wasn’t a bad book, but that we didn’t love it. I said that I thought it was interesting and generally well-written, but that it was very depressing and that is not my typical cup of tea, which got a bunch of murmurs of agreement. There was an Adult Services librarian leading the discussion and she confessed that she LOVES the book, but understood our qualms with it. She chooses the books for the club and they meet once a month. I took a look through the upcoming few months of books, and it looks like she typically chooses something in the realm of drama/thriller/mystery.

After introducing ourselves, the librarian led the discussion with questions about the characters, quotes from the book, what our opinions were of certain statements, etc. She had sent one question to us prior to the meeting for us to reflect on before getting together:

Star says to Walk: “You’re like a kid. Better and worse. Bad and good. None of us are any one thing. We’re just a collection of the best and worst things we’ve done.” (chapter 8, p. 67). Later, Duchess talks about Dolly’s abusive father to Hal: “Some people are all dark.” (chapter 25, p. 203). But Hal, thinking about Sissy, tells Duchess, “But with children…there is no bad.” (chapter 25, p. 206). Are any of the characters in this novel morally pure in either direction? 

She did ask some “yes or no” questions, but people usually would add some explanation to their answer. Usually someone would jump in right away with an answer, too. One lady in particular tended to ramble and interrupt which clearly irritated at least one other lady and they got a little snippy, but it never became uncivil. (It was honestly a little amusing, as a bystander). I heard everyone participate at least one time. Some people were a little more reserved than others; the discussion did get pretty eager, and it could be a little difficult to get control of the conversation, especially for those with quieter voices, but overall it was a very mature environment and allowed for some intelligent, healthy discussion of the book.

I really enjoyed attending the club, and especially thought the book we discussed lent itself well to discussion. There were a lot of moral questions asked in the book and it led to thought provoking conversation. There were also some things I found unclear while reading, and discussing it with other readers cleared up my confusion and made sense. It was also nice to know that I wasn’t the only one who got a little mixed up about some of the events that occurred. Overall, this was a really nice experience. The only thing keeping me from attending regularly is that I don’t think I’d care to read all of the books they will be reading. I might attend once in a while when it’s a book that sounds enjoyable to me, though.

We ended the meeting by individually giving the book a rating out of 5 stars, which tallied up to 3.72, and the librarian rated the discussion "a solid 5!"