I finally walked out of a book club meeting when someone called the ending of "The Road" a plot hole

Charlie Kelly · 2026-09-30T06:05:04.434116+00:00

Last Tuesday at our library meeting in Akron, a guy named Dave spent 15 minutes arguing that the ending of The Road was lazy writing and that McCarthy just ran out of ideas at page 287. I told him the whole point is that carrying the fire isn't a plot event, it's the only thing left when the world has nothing. He said I was reading too much into it and half the group agreed with him, which honestly made me want to flip the table. The whole night turned into people voting on whether a book is "good" or "bad" instead of actually talking about what it said. So I want to know, how do you all handle a group that treats every discussion like a review score instead of a conversation?

Rigidtalk

Loading…

I finally walked out of a book club meeting when someone called the ending of "The Road" a plot hole | Book Club Debates - Rigidtalk