The Book Club Experience

If you’re part of a book club, I imagine it must be pretty thrilling to have the author show up to answer some questions.

As an author, I can tell you, it’s exhilarating to be invited to a book club to answer questions. Unlike readings or book fairs where I’m trying to sell the book to people who often know little or nothing about it, the book club is completely different. I don’t have to sell anything. They’re already sold.

Recently, I had my second opportunity to meet with a book club. Two members of my writing group, Kate Robbins and Melanie Martin, belong to this club and Melanie picked the book. They got together at 7 pm for a discussion and I showed up at 8:30 to an enthusiastic crowd of six from varied backgrounds including a nurse, a former reporter, a sister of two soldiers/peacekeepers and a historian.

Many of their questions and reactions are similar to others I’ve spoken to or reviews I’ve read, but the book club environment is a great opportunity to throw the ideas back and forth and gauge how different people from different backgrounds see the same story. It’s also the kind of interaction that is important with a possible sequel in mind.

They brought up a number of topics. For example. they wanted to know how much of the novel was true, why didn’t I write it as nonfiction, who were the characters based on and what happened to the characters after the book ends. For my part, I wanted to know which character they identified with and why, how they dealt with the multiple points of view and how did the book make them feel.

I learned that many were a bit wary when they learned that the book contained six points of view but they were unanimous in their response that it worked well. One comment was they had no problem remembering where they left off when they returned to each character. I was happy to hear that as I had met two schools of thought as I was developing the novel and the multiple point of view always won out. When I tried to write the novel from only Atif’s point of view, I found my readers wanted to know what became of Jac or why Niko did what he did. The multiple points of view enabled me to not only flesh out the motivations of all the major characters, but also to do the one thing that I wanted to do with the novel in the first place – tell as much of the story of the fall of Srebrenica as possible.

When I ask people how the novel made them feel, I always get different answers. Much of it depends on which character they identify with the most. If they like Jac, they might feel frustrated. If they like Niko, it might be anger. And if they identify with Atif or Tarak, they might have a hard time feeling anything from the two emotionally suppressed characters. And many mothers that I’ve spoken to identify with Marija and are heartbroken over the situation she was forced in to.

The book club members actually made a point that they appreciated that I simply stuck to storytelling and didn’t attempt to manipulate their feelings. The journalistic style of writing, they said, opened it up for them to choose how they felt by the material and this is what I had hoped for when I was writing it. I always feared that my own feelings might come out in the writing and I didn’t want those feelings to slap the reader in the face. I’m satisfied that I was able to avoid that from the discussion I had with the book club members.

I also asked the group what they would have liked to have seen in the book and they said they would have loved to have had map. With that in mind, I plan to post on the map issue and include some maps, and if the book gets a second printing, this will definitely be something to recommend to my publisher.

I’d like to thank the club for choosing the book and giving me the opportunity to discuss it with them. There’s nothing more thrilling for an author than to get such spirited feedback.

And the spiced Havarti cheese was delicious.

😀

My blog tour leading up to the Atlantic Book Awards continues tomorrow and the next stop will be with Paul Butler. Check it out and at the last stop on the tour, you will have a chance to win a signed copy of Braco.