My book club in Austin nearly fell apart because of one debate on a memoir

Our group spent literally 45 minutes arguing over whether the author in 'Educated' was exaggerating her childhood for drama. Honestly, I thought the whole thing was just about sharing opinions, but one guy kept pulling up fact-check websites on his phone to prove her timeline was off. It got so heated that two people threatened to quit the club right then and there. We ended up voting to split future discussions into fact versus feeling sections, which felt awkward but necessary. Has anyone else had a book club debate get this personal over a memoir or non-fiction pick?

2 comments

2 Comments

shah.evan21d ago

That "fact versus feeling sections" thing actually makes a lot of sense... memoirs blur the line between memory and truth so much that it's almost impossible to separate them cleanly without a weird system like that.

river_adams2521d ago

Bring up the idea of how do you even decide what counts as fact versus feeling in a memoir. Like if the writer felt something really strongly at the time, does that make it more true than what actually happened? I feel like that line gets crossed on purpose sometimes just to make a story better.