“The opposite of the happy ending is not actually the sad ending--the sad ending is sometimes the happy ending. The opposite of the happy ending is actually the unsatisfying ending.”
― Orson Scott Card
I like to go back to re-read the ending of certain novels I enjoyed. The first pages hooked me, of course, but my overall feeling about the book depends on how satisfied I felt when I closed the cover. I want a novel to end at precisely the right point, neither too early or too late. Sometimes an otherwise enjoyable novel is ruined for me when a writer drags out the action beyond what I think is the perfect stopping point.
What does constitute a satisfying ending for me? One that has an element of the unexpected, that leaves me slightly off balance, with questions lurking to be mulled over.
Unlike some readers who sneak a peek at the last pages while reading earlier chapters, I savor the smooth unfolding right down to the final words. If I am disappointed in the ending I am left with a sour taste for the whole work, and an irritation with the author.
Here are some endings that linger in my mind:
"Tell your aunt," he said, "that you met a poet who was looking for the Belle Dame Sans Merci, and who met you instead, and who sends her his compliments, and will not disturb her, and is on his way to fresh woods and pastures new."
"I'll try to remember," she said, steadying her crown.
So he kissed her, always matter-of-fact, so as not to frighten her and went on his way.
And on the way home, she met her brothers, and there was a rough-and-tumble and the lovely crown (of pliant twigs, ivy and ferns, roses and honeysuckle fringed with belladonna) was broken, and she forgot the message, which was never delivered.
From Possession by A. S. Byatt
"The dying sometimes speak of themselves in the third person. I was not speaking that way. I said: I am bleeding. I am going to bleed to death. And I will be lucky if I die before he returns.
Give me my Scallop shell of quiet.
You know, they did not print the whole of the Indian song in the subway. Only a few lines. But I know the poem.
"It's off in the distance. It came into the room. It's here in the circle."
I know the poem.
She knows the poem.
(From In The Cut by Susanna Moore)
Then ended. But I see no reason to announce the news. Let viscid history suck me down a bit. When the season is right I'll return to whatever is out there. It's just a question of what sound to make or fake. Meanwhile the rumors accumulate. Kidnap, exile, torture, self-mutilation and death.
The most beguiling of the rumors has me living among beggars and syphilitics, performing good works, patron saint of all those men who hear the river whistles sing the mysteries and who return to sleep in wine by the south wheel of the city.
From Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo
When I remember that dizzy summer, that dull, stupid, lovely, dire summer, it seems that in those days I ate my lunches, smelled another's skin, noticed a shade of yellow, even simply sat, with greater lust and hopefulness--and that I lusted with greater faith, hoped with greater abandon. The people I loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places I sat with them, movie lots and monuments.
No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything.
From The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
I prefer endings that carry a slight electrical shock or feature an element of ambiguity instead of having every last detail wrapped up and tied with a bow. WRITE ON!
