Book Club: The Catch

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Book Club: The Catch

10/31/2025

As I mentioned in class, I didn't realize that the Wednesday after Veteran's Day is a Tuesday schedule, cutting one full class out of our semester. So in order to make it possible to talk about the novel (The Catch: A Novel), we need to space out the reading. So we'll discuss the book at the end of the semester, but we'll do a "book club" online each week leading up to it to make it a little more manageable.

For this first book club, I asked you to read the first sixy pages. Here is your first book club prompt: What questions do you have about the novel? About the characters, plot, themes? This is a first chance to write about the book so it doesn't have to be perfect or profound. Sixty pages in, what are you wondering about as you read?

5 Comments

I.S.

11/1/2025 11:10:08 am

One thing I’m wondering about is the meaning of the color blue within the story and its connection to Clara and Serene. From my understanding of the story, I think it might relate to their mental health and possible detachment from reality. Dempsey mentions that “Kendrick always said it must have been tough dealing with [Serene’s] condition” (56). Then, from the chapter about Serene (47-52), it seems like she was dealing with some sort of psychosis or mania. It says that Serene “did not wish the blue world on her babies” (52), which makes me think that maybe Clara inherited whatever Serene had. So far, I think that the woman Clara believes to be Serene is either not real or someone pretending to be her, especially after she reads Clara’s book. However, it’s difficult to discern that because both Clara and Dempsey are unreliable narrators.

Dempsey, on the other hand, talks about how she prefers “to live amongst a bit of colour… a bit more life” like her mother (56). So, I also wonder if the twins are representative of two sides of their mother– the side that was more grounded in reality (i.e., Dempsey) versus the side that was not (i.e., Clara).

The parallel between their mother and the woman in the first chapter who asks Clara a question is interesting. The woman says, “how can a person who cannot prove themselves real produce anything of resonance, anything of note” (13). Clara later thinks this about what she said: “your child, you ungrateful dick” (14). Serene also says, “how could someone who was not real do anything of worth, anything of note” (49). This makes me wonder if that’s how Clara feels about her mother sometimes, but is not expressing it because she wants to hold onto the idealized version she has of her, or maybe she doesn’t want to accept that her mother might’ve not actually wanted children.

Glen Beaulieu

11/3/2025 04:52:04 am

I'm not sure if I'm just reading too much into things, or if my recent re-watching of "Black Swan" is influencing my thoughts on this, but I'm wondering about how reliable of a narrator both Clara and Dempsey are in this novel. Clara especially makes me wonder about this, not only because Dempsey says that this "is not the first time [Clara] has seen things that aren't there" (26), but also Clara being so manically convinced that she has randomly stumbled upon her presumed dead mother---to the point where she breaks into Serene's home to gather evidence---at a Rolex shop on her birthday just seems very odd to me. Like I said, I had recently re-watched "Black Swan," and Clara reminded me so much of the parts of that movie where Nina begins to see herself in the faces of strangers everywhere she goes. As Isabella has also pointed out, the parallels between the woman at the beginning and the later chapter about Serene are very, very interesting to me. It not only makes me think more about this potentially being some kind of delusion Clara is experiencing, but it also makes me think about the theme of repetition, irony, and, for lack of a better term, "fate" in this novel. Serene, by removing herself from her children's life in an effort to give them a chance at a better life that she is so convinced she couldn't give them, she has practically made it guaranteed that they too experience this "blue world" that she finds herself in. Maybe she never wanted children, or maybe she would have hurt them in the same ways that she seems to be hurt, but her choosing to abandon them and disappear from their lives with little chance of reconciliation has only guaranteed that they experience this "blue world" in a similar way to her. Both Clara and Dempsey are struggling with their identities and place in the world, with Clara literally playing a character in her public author meetups while Dempsey seems to hide from the world in general. Their real selves are longing for connection, to both each other and people in general, yet they have no idea how to actually create those connections.

Alexandra O'Brien

11/3/2025 02:53:27 pm

This is such a distorted yet engaging read.

My first real overarching question is whether the mother is alive. There are slight hints of a sort of unreliable narrator. We get these moments of doubt or questioning following these big thoughts or moments, especially when it comes to the mother.

Also, what specifically happened to her if she is dead? There are a lot of hints too, not to fully trust the story being told to you. We are told that the mother drank and did drugs, leading to the risk of fetal alcohol syndrome and other problems in the twins. And that one sister wasn't always fully there, in a way. So, seeds of doubt are planted. But why? What point is the story making with this distortion and frantic search for a lost mother?

And the writing in this feels very much like a "bad acid trip," as I can recall the author saying about her mother's writing, which is funny. Because maybe it is a way of showing how the daughter Clara is becoming a lot like her mother, and even to the point of maybe imagining her - seeing herself in her mother in a kind of way? And even her sister questions this as well, to her face, that it's crazy she thinks she is coincidentally seeing her "dead" mom that looks like her. BUT I do always like to stay skeptical, so maybe the mom is really alive!

And I also wonder if she is alive, then why? Did she have to fake her death? Was she forced into it? Was it all a misunderstanding or something darker?

There is also a lot of characterization of the stepmother, Claudette, and I wonder how this will tie into the book's ending. I will say that she is not my favorite so far!

I overall love the broken and pieced look we get into these girls' lives; it shows how deep their trauma went, affecting them both in different ways. And it's a terrific way to let the reader see them try to put the pieces together and make sense of their mom and their relationship to one another.

Ashley Luise

11/4/2025 03:40:31 pm

Right now, I am wondering if the twins’ mother is alive. I assume that she is dead because “everyone knows that whatever goes in [the Thames] either does not come back or comes back dead” (52), and there is no other evidence to support that Serene did actually return. However, Clara thinks she sees her actual mother in the shop—is who she sees legitimate, a hallucination, or something else? Is Clara living in reality while Dempsey chooses to live in fantasy, or is Clara hallucinating while Dempsey seemingly accepts the truth? I don’t believe either of them are reliable narrators, and this makes me question who to believe.

I wonder whether Clara or Dempsey is a more reliable narrator, but where the fog impacts each of them so differently, I question if either of them are reliable. Clara has spent nearly her entire life living a persona, whether that be in her professional career as an author or as the adopted daughter of a lighter-skinned woman. With this knowledge, can we say her experience with the “near-blue [fog]” (4) is dissociation or detachment from reality? I am inclined to think so, especially where Clara makes it a point to refer to her body and herself as two different entities while she’s in the fog, but I need more information to believe this. On the other hand, Dempsey has lived a life hindered by being the twin who was harmed worse by her mother, perhaps due to fetal alcohol syndrome or some other reason. Her reliance on Dr. Rayna Panelli and her seeing the “stripes of colour and fog across [her] eyeline, dividing [her] visual scope [as a] pre-birthday migraine” (23) makes me wonder if she is trying to find a rational explanation to understand her symptoms of the fog to make herself feel better. Or, is this really the truth and Clara is the one blowing her symptoms out of proportion? Dempsey also believes Clara is hallucinating and this would “not be the first time [her] sister saw things that are not there” (26), so I wonder if she writes off Clara as losing it to make herself feel like the better, more evolved twin that Clara has always gotten to me. Are either of them wholly correct about this fog or does the true explanation for this fog lie somewhere in between each twin’s rationalization? Right now, I am hesitant to completely believe either twin’s explanation, but I love how their differences in rationale emphasize how trauma can impact people differently.

Anna Dykhoff

11/5/2025 12:24:31 pm

My first big question is what the heck is going on with Clara's novel? Is she so far out of touch with reality that she believes she is living the events of the novel (twins seeing their mother as the same age as them) or did she predict her own future with her writing? Additionally, clearly the idea of motherhood is both traumatizing and frustrating to Clara, yet she seems to yearn for it in some way. After hooking up with Cristian, Clara reflects the sentiment that if she wasn’t alone at this age, she wouldn’t be doing such things, and spits bitterness into the night about the mother who questioned her at the book signing. On the topic of that mother, I am lost on whether the interaction Clara had with her was even real. This mother releases extensive phrases upon phrases that seem highly planned yet raw, and Clara somehow plans out these long responses to choose from. It seems too pinpointed to be real, too specific to Clara’s fears. With the introduction of Dempsey’s character as well, it is clear that both sisters find themselves to be better than the other in some way, or even better than people in general. Clara’s narration honestly characterizes her as, for lack of better words, a bitch, but a self-aware one. Dempsey sees herself as much better than Clara morally, saying things like “Even though I’m unimpressed with her behavior thus far, I go to the kitchen to sort out a drink, because that’s the kind of person I am.” I am using the audiobook for this novel, and the speaker emphasizes the “I” in that phrase, reading it as snooty rather than sincere. I overall am lost on what Clara’s reality is so far, with the “fog” and the apparent fainting/exhaustion episodes, and I am looking forward to seeing how this is revealed throughout the novel.

Book Club: The Catch

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