Huckleberry Finn, an abused outcast, rafts with Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River, where they have a variety of experiences.

How do you critique such a classic? No one at NUBClub would say that Huck Finn was bad. In fact, all of us could find parts of it that were stunningly powerful and well written. There are just so many potent scenes and characters -- the abusive father, the feud and Huck's unwillingness to narrate it, Huck's self-determination of his wickedness for being the only truly moral white character in the book. The main question we had was about how much the choices Twain was making in the novel were outdated in the 21st century. Some of that was how uncomfortable the book is; by using Huck as the narrator, Twain provides a naive cover of the horrors of slavery that as adults we couldn't miss and it made many of the scenes very difficult to read. It's not so much that we thought Twain didn't have that intent as that modern discussions of this time period would treat it differently, particular by giving more voice to enslaved people. There's also a famous debate about the final scenes where Jim is essentially tortured for several days by Tom Sawyer as he enacts his fantasy escape narrative. About half of NUBClub hated that section and thought it betrayed the rest of the book. The rest of NUBClub thought those scenes just reinforced its brilliance by undermining the entire edifice of young adult adventure and again offering a view of the skewed ethics of a slavery-based society. Again, it's hard to review Huck Finn given so much has been already discussed about it, but we really didn't have a consensus. If we are your guide, you will either find it a staggering work of subversive genius or a great novel from a previous era that has aged past its use.