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“Friendships of over six years were broken overnight,” Rosa* says of the sudden, dramatic dissolution of her book club in Victoria, Australia some months ago. What started as a chance to share notes on the finer points of dramatic literature had become a real-life drama.
The book club had been an important fixture of Rosa’s calendar for several years and, like many others, was hosted on rotation in the homes of different members each month. Although its primary purpose was discussing books, Rosa felt it was equally about socialising, and members were encouraged to dress up in outfits relating to the month’s book, with prizes for the best dressed.
Cracks started appearing after a survey of the club’s 12 members, all women in their early thirties, was shared to gather views on how it was working. When the anonymous feedback was presented at the next meeting, the moderator reported that most attenders felt there needed to be more “commitment” to finishing the book, a comment which didn’t go down well with some members.
A few people felt singled out by the survey. “It came to be interpreted as ‘you need to finish the book or maybe don’t come,’” says Rosa. Although the group was ostensibly used to sharing different points of view, this gap couldn’t be bridged: before the night was over, some members had walked out, and left the group chat the next day. The book club hasn’t met since.
Book clubs are a staple in the diaries of literature lovers the world over and are reportedly increasing in popularity in Australia and the UK. Sometimes formed of friends, but just as often frequented by strangers connected only by locality, book clubs occupy a peculiar position somewhere between casual socialising and a semi-structured membership club.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, bringing people together, often with alcohol, then encouraging them to voice their opinions can sometimes lead to bust ups. Erin Johnson, 42, has been running her London-based book club for nearly 10 years. With an open invitation policy, and 3,400 members online, the club usually attracts 10 to 20 people per in-person meeting.
Inevitably some book club discussions “veer off topic” into wider social issues, Johnson says. She sees this as par for the course. But when characters don’t mesh well, discussions can sometimes get heated and disagreements have moved online after some meetings. This is a step too far for Johnson. “Please don’t air your dirty laundry on the public group for thousands of people to see – it’s just meant to be a nice fun book club!”
Although the world is not short of complicated, tough questions and strongly held beliefs, personal and procedural issues can be just as fractious as politics. A 2019 BookBrowse survey of nearly 4,000 book club members found the most commonly reported gripe was over-dominant personalities, followed by irregular attendance and members not reading the book.
Karen Stillman, 47, a North Carolina native, has first-hand experience. “For over a year, four women would turn up to our book club without having touched the book, saying they hadn’t had a chance to read it. These women are all retired! How did they not have the time?”
One evening, Stillman ran out of patience. “They walked in without saying hello to half the group, so I went down to tell them: you need to read the book.” Her point was made: they left immediately and didn’t return.
These experiences highlight a tension at the core of many book club bust-ups: a difference in expectations. “I think pretty much everyone joins a book club because they want to make new friends and meet new people, but people stay for different reasons,” says Becky, who lives on the west coast of the US.
Becky’s book club began as a monthly meeting of strangers but blossomed into meeting regularly for wider social activities. She had started the club to meet new people and shared organising duties with an old friend from high school.
Club admin had begun to take its toll and Becky, who is now in her 30s, felt she was pulling more weight than her co-coordinator. “I felt book club was a big part of my social life and very important to me, but my friend didn’t respect it in the same way,” Becky says.
The issue took up headspace for her friend, too: “She wrote me a long email on Christmas Day breaking up with me!” Her friend hasn’t come to book club since.
Book clubs are a very simple form of community gathering. The entry requirements rarely extend beyond reading the book. Most are timid affairs that go off without issue, but since her own book club breakup, Rosa wonders if tightening this loose arrangement might have prevented disaster.
“The fallout makes me wonder whether these kind of semi-structured social events do need some sort of ‘house rules’,” she says. “It’s all a bit meta, but humans are complicated.”
*Some names have been changed
