MINNEAPOLIS — You’ve undoubtedly cleared things you’ve outgrown out of a closet. You’ve closed the door for the last time on a great house that’s no longer a great house for you. But what happens when a book club member no longer seems like the right fit?
It’s bound to happen.
More than 5 million Americans belong to book clubs — and one-fifth of them belong to more than one. The numbers are probably higher in Minnesota, with both Minneapolis and St. Paul ranked in the top 15 cities for book lovers and in the top 10 for book purchasers. That St. Paul is the epicenter of Little Free Libraries doesn’t hurt.
Book club members from around the state overwhelmingly say their clubs can deal with minor kerfuffles, such as someone who never reads the book or occasionally monopolizes the conversation. Actually needing to give someone the heave-ho is rare. But it does happen.
The Hungry Minds book group was formed in 2001, when several members retired from teaching at Edina High School. Years ago, members realized one clubber was making others uncomfortable. They were on an annual retreat at a member’s lake home when it became clear one woman was often verbally abusive to another member. With the help of a psychotherapist in the group, the others came up with a plan.
“This woman had created not only a terrible situation for her friend, but her toxicity had a negative effect on all of us. Asking her to leave from the lake [would have] had some tricky circumstances. So, we agreed to wait and ask her to leave at the next month’s meeting,” reported Jinny Jensen via email. “She was pretty unhappy but did leave us. We have been much better for it and are grateful for the therapist in the group for facilitating.”
In one of Brooke Nelson’s groups, it was a case of not vetting a new member thoroughly. The new member had been brought in by someone in the group, but when that someone left soon afterwards, the remaining book clubbers had little in common with a woman they barely knew.
“I don’t want to say nobody liked her, but I had a hard time with her personally, to the degree that it was affecting my wanting to go,” Nelson said. “The easy thing would have been to go to the person who brought her in and say, ‘We don’t know if this is a good fit. Can you talk to her?’ But we couldn’t, because she was gone.”
Meanwhile, Nelson said, things went from bad to worse.
“You’re only seeing this person once every month or six weeks and getting to know them two hours at a time, so you don’t know right away that this person thrives on drama and only can talk about themselves or makes every discussion about them,” said Nelson, citing a few most-often-discussed objections to difficult book clubbers. “You can’t tell that until it’s too late. You’re a few books in and it’s like, ‘It’s going to be like this every time?’ ”
Nobody felt comfortable kicking the woman out, so they took a drastic step: They dissolved the group. and then reformed it, minus the problematic member. (It worked. They’re still together.)
Carol Elde, a member of two book clubs and also a licensed marriage and family therapist, called that approach “sneaky” but adds: “Sometimes, the kind thing is to be sneaky. If they didn’t feel up to dealing with the situation, like one person taking her aside and saying what the problem might be, it might be even kinder to say, ‘We’re going to take a break.’ If they didn’t know that group well, they might not even know they regrouped.”
Jeanne Poole observed a more direct approach in one of her clubs, which met at a library and was moderated by a librarian. When one member talked over everyone else, the librarian took her aside and explained the group might not suit her if she couldn’t cede the floor. She opted to go, said Poole, adding, “It was too bad because she did have interesting things to say. But she just wouldn’t stop.”
Elde emphasized that sometimes a bunch of good people don’t work well as a group and it’s nobody fault. That was the case for Carol Allis. The Minnetonka woman was in a Stillwater book club she loved but when things started going the way of elaborately themed dinners and costumed characters, she realized it was a bad fit. She kicked herself out of the group.
If self-ejection isn’t forthcoming, Elde recommends the librarian’s one-on-one approach.
“If one person is abusive or has anger issues that are unresolved and you can’t deal with it in the group, generally what I would recommend is one person who’s good at discussing things and managing emotions talks to this person,” Elde said. “Say, ‘We have certain ways of interacting and these are what they are and if these rules don’t work for you, you have a choice to follow them or you certainly can opt out of the group.’ ”
In general, giving a difficult member the option of leaving voluntarily is a better bet than giving them the heave-ho, said Cindy Kalland. She’s a member of a club that’s going strong after 52 years and a licensed book club facilitator — a part-time gig she took on after teaching English in Hopkins for 37 years. Facilitating four book clubs, she noticed it can be easier for an outsider to step in than a club member.
“If someone was dominating, I would be able to say, just like in a classroom, ‘Let’s hear from some other voices,’ ” Kalland said. “Or if they said things that were offensive to some other people, which seldom happened but sometimes it did, I’d say, ‘Jane, here’s what I heard you saying. Is that what you meant to say?’ ”
All of the book club members we talked to agreed that it’s much more common for a club to be enriched by differences of personality, taste or thought than to be damaged by them.
