21
Our book club fought for an hour over whether first person ruins a story
I brought up that The Great Gatsby works in first person but most modern novels with a first person narrator feel too whiny to me. Three people jumped down my throat saying Nick Carraway is actually unreliable and that's the whole point. Has anyone else noticed that book clubs get stuck on the narrator's perspective more than the actual plot?
2 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In2 Comments
aaronroberts7d ago
Three people in my book club hated first person so much they stopped reading The Martian halfway through.
2
finley_roberts277d ago
The Martian worked fine for me in first person, honestly. I think people get too hung up on the technical stuff and forget whether they actually liked the story or not. Like yeah Nick is unreliable, but that doesn't mean the whole book is ruined just because it's first person.
2