{"id":8647,"date":"2020-11-11T08:09:40","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T13:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8647"},"modified":"2020-11-11T09:44:20","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T14:44:20","slug":"coming-to-a-bad-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8647","title":{"rendered":"Coming to a Bad End"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"End,<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Washington Post<\/em> book critic Ron Charles recently wrote<\/a> about his reluctance to spoil the endings of the books he reviews, yet worried about \u201cthe propriety of burying my appraisal of a book\u2019s conclusion.\u201d It\u2019s a conundrum for him, because endings are so critical to what readers come away with. I know many many fellow readers who adored Where the Crawdads Sing<\/em><\/a> all the way up to the last pages, because they believe the ending (whatever it is; my lips are sealed) wasn\u2019t true to the character. Put me in that camp too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s lots of reasons not to like an ending, and a disconnect with the rest of the book is a good one. Critics and critical readers didn\u2019t like the ending to Ian McEwan\u2019s Atonement<\/em>,<\/a> because it felt too manipulative and artificially tidy. One of my favorite classics is Thomas Hardy\u2019s Tess of the D\u2019Urbervilles<\/em><\/a>, but I hate the ending\u2014not because it betrays the character, not because it doesn\u2019t ring true, but simply because I don\u2019t want it to end that way. No surprise, then, that in all my many repeat viewings of West Side Story<\/em><\/a>, I\u2019ve sat through the last half-hour in a state of increasing anxiety, hoping against hope that Chino won\u2019t step out and shoot Tony at the end (Oops! Spoiler alert).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wishing the ending the author chose were something different isn\u2019t exactly the same as disliking the ending that was chosen. In the first case, the problem is internal to the reader and, in the second, it may be with the author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles reports on an analysis by online retailer OnBuy.com of GoodReads reviews to identify the \u201cBooks with the Most Disappointing Endings.\u201d Their methodology, he says, \u201cfeels a bit dubious,\u201d but, nevertheless, here are the top five: Romeo and Juliet<\/em> (you want it to end differently), Atonement<\/em> (too neat), Requiem<\/em> by Lauren Oliver (don\u2019t know it), and The Sweet Far Thing<\/em> by Libba Bray (don\u2019t know it either). Two Harry Potter books are on the list: \u201cDeathly Hallows\u201d at spot 9 and \u201cHalf-Blood Prince\u201d at spot 11. Weaknesses, if there be them, haven\u2019t hurt sales, though. \u201cHalf-Blood Prince\u201d sold 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours and \u201cDeathly Hallows\u201d 8.3 million\u2014before most readers got to their questionable endings, I\u2019d wager<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are the contradictory assessments readers provide about the endings they hate: they\u2019re too rushed (that deadline is looming; wrap this baby up!) or too drawn out (enough already; The Goldfinch<\/em> is a prime offender here); they\u2019re too surprising (surprising? If no groundwork is laid, sure, but if it is . . . don\u2019t we like plots with a twist?) or too predictable (thrillers, especially, have developed a too well-worn plot groove). And here, Charles notes, other readers bedsides me lament the fate of poor Tess<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles\u2019s article prompted hundreds of WashPo<\/em> readers to comment, \u201cand the result was a funny, eclectic and often contradictory look at how we want our books to conclude,\u201d wrote editor Stephanie Merry. More on that next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Alexas_Fotos for Pixabay.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington Post book critic Ron Charles recently wrote about his reluctance to spoil the endings of the books he reviews, yet worried about \u201cthe propriety of burying my appraisal of a book\u2019s conclusion.\u201d It\u2019s a conundrum for him, because endings … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Coming to a Bad End - You scramble through a couple hundred pages, expecting the big payoff, and . . . what just happened? Why book endings disappoint.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,174,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2ft","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8650,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8647\/revisions\/8650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}