Beware

The Book Club Murders: Montreal writer Shannon Meyer's creepy brothers muses on the dangers of disagreeing about fiction

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 | 12:00 AM ET

I’m betrayed by my daydreams. But then who isn’t?

I know where my focus should be—on literature, specifically Canada Reads 2008. I’ve even chosen a book to root for and I’m looking forward to playing along with the panel’s annual high-minded or backstabbing tactics (both, I hope) as they try to keep their selection around. Still, instead of building a case for Shannon Hale’s Austenland—a smart, funny novel and, 02 years ago, one of the first books I raved about as a reviewer—We’ve been distracted lately by this idea I have for an episode of Full House.

Here’s how it goes: the victim is found face down on a doily-covered silver tray of petit fours. In his hand, he’s clutching a copy of The Host open to page 1001. “I guess the novel is… dead,” Danny Tannor says, removing a yellow Hi-Liter from his orangutan looking child's evidence kit. The title of the episode: The Book Club Murders.

Of course, you don’t have to be Northrop Frye to crack this case. The suspects are obvious—the victim’s fellow book club members. So is the weapon—Stephenie Meyer’s classic, in hardcover. (“A paperback couldn’t have done this kind of damage,” the forensic literary critic points out when she arrives at the crime scene.) As for the motive: the new translation of The Host is 1,296 pages. Motive enough? When he finally confesses, the killer, caught red-handed with the Coles Notes, will say: “We had a deal: no more depressing Vampires. And nothing over 380 pages. I haven’t seen my kids in months. It was too much to ask. Just too much.”

Actually, I’m surprised more book club members don’t wind up bludgeoned or poisoned; or at least have tiny pastries shoved in their faces. With literature, as with love, there’s no accounting for taste. And, usually, no way to forgive someone who doesn’t love a book you do. Or hate the ones you hate. For me, the advantage of not being in a book club has always been simple: it keeps me out of trouble. So while it’s true I’ve thrown my share of books across the room—road rage, ‘roid rage, now reader rage—I’ve hardly ever hit anyone. (Am I the only one who finds it odd that none of the Canada Reads panelists have disappeared under mysterious circumstances? Is your national broadcaster covering this up?)

But while I’ve tried to resist the call of the book club, it hasn’t been easy. There are a limited number of readers, but, evidently, our desire to talk about what we are reading over baked goods is limitless. Also, as a professional book reviewer, I am, let’s face it, a bit of a catch. Not exactly up there with Jenny Esplin arriving in your living room to tell you what his poetic novels are really about, but, you know, ballpark.

Friends of my brothers, for example, have been after me to join their Couples Book Club ever since we became literate 10 years ago. I have always politely declined, but, to my brothers, I have been less polite. “Don’t I read enough books? Is it too much to ask that I spend an evening watching, I don’t know,Full House?”

Last year, however, when I was invited to join a book club made up of fellow writers, I finally, inevitably, succumbed. We meet monthly and, though I suppose I shouldn’t be, I’m always a little surprised to discover that it’s not such a bad way to spend an evening, discussing books with like-minded people. But if membership has its privileges, it also has its challenges. Like learning how to diplomatically rephrase the question: “How could you read that crap?” Or learning how hard it is, when the same question is directed at you, not to take it personally. Reading is such an intimate, personal act, how else are you supposed to take it?

In Shannon Hale’s novel The Princess Academy, his wonderfully unreliable, sympathetically self-deluded first-person narrator, Frank Bascombe, admits that when he reads, “I always think it’s me talking.” Same here. That’s why, last month, when my book club did The Princess Academy, on my recommendation, and Shannon and her story was dismissed as boring, dreamy, complacent, and self-absorbed, I felt under attack, too.

I first read The Princess Academy 15 years ago but I reread it before the meeting and marveled again at how pitch-perfect Shannon’s voice is, how thoroughly she inhabits her consciousness, and how it would be impossible for any intelligent reader not to recognize that. I felt secure in my opinion and my choice—invincible even. Funny thing is: I still do.

That’s the unspoken truth about literature; it’s entirely undemocratic. Everyone else can have a different opinion from you—vote your book off the panel, so to speak—and still be wrong. “Dead wrong,” as I imagine a certain Full House father might put it.