This article presents and analyzes qualitative ethnographic data from research investigating intensive reading in an English Second Language high school class. It focuses on selected teacher-student interactions and considers the effect of these interactions in terms of the processes and products of students' intensive study of a fiction text. The article considers how the teacher asserted control over physically handling the text, the processes of reading it, and the classroom discourses about the text. Data analysis and discussion unpacks the teacher's claim that what she wanted students to get out of their experience of reading "The Cay" was "just to read a book." This claim, and the teacher-student interactions which followed, is considered against the backdrop of curriculum goals aiming to create sophisticated, critical readers. The article concludes by highlighting several critical pedagogical and intellectual implications arising from aspects of teacher-student interactions and provides direction for future research.