Praise for Unsatisfying Endings
Perfect endings have consumed culture from Disney-fied romances to books and TV shows. If an ending doesn't feel right or unsatisfying we deem the whole thing a failure or disaster retroactively ruining whatever was finished. Recently HBO felt backlash for the Game of Thrones series finale. But shouldn’t it be about the journey and not just the destination with endings?
I rarely finish books where the ending leaves me wanting more. Sometimes I will be confused, shocked or unsure of what the nebulous ending meant. All of these are up for interpretation. I recently read The Snakes by Sadie Jones. The book was enjoyable with Succession vibes. Once I reached the ending, all the possible scenarios set up throughout the book evaporated. It was a gut wrenching twist. I hoped for a miracle, something to salvage what was left. I was not satisfied. All lingering questions remained unanswered and the fraught family dynamics and complexities ended. I felt duped.
It’s rare for me to be completely blind sided by a book. Happy, morose or in limbo; I like most of them. This book ending felt like a betrayal which speaks to how engrossing the story was. Why would she end it like that? What was the author's intent? To show nihilism to these characters and their world? That all their striving and hand wringing over doing the right thing meant nothing?
It took me weeks to process my feelings about the ending. Every time it started creeping back into my mind I got irrationally angry. Why did it end like that? I couldn't get over this initial stumbling block. I needed space to think. When I revisited the ending and all my lingering questions I think it was a statement of nihilism and how the universe doesn't need or want to care about you even if you try to minimize your bad impulses and impact on the world. Or it could be a statement on how even the most tenuous connection to money will taint your life no matter how far and how many boundaries you construct.
I won't spoil the ending because it is genuinely shocking. The premise is a daughter from a very wealthy family in England doesn't like to use or tell anyone about how much money she theoretically has access to. She doesn't use it and despises its origins. Her husband only learns about this wealth after her brother dies and they meet her parents for the second time. He becomes bewitched by how easy money makes life, as we all would, and wants to make a deal with her dad for them to get a certain amount within her ethical standards so they aren't living paycheck to paycheck. The ending also leaves the possibility open that money, connections and her family may have orchestrated the ending scenario which is pretty terrifying.
Without this ending I would have run headlong into my next must read book after meandering in my mind a few days if some passages were worth ruminating on. This ending stopped me in my tracks. I had no one to guide me. No signals for how I should react. Many assumptions I had about the characters and their trajectories were fictitious and false; a moot point. Where do I go from here? No easy answers are sometimes the best answers.
This ending, while still not my favorite, kick started my brain and stayed there nagging and poking until I paid attention. Most thought experiments can be explained or have answers available on the internet. If I wanted the easy way out I could have turned to good reads or another book platform. This would have cheated me of the intimate experience of puzzling it out for myself.
I wanted to complain about unsatisfying endings but they are more memorable and powerful than conventional ones. Even though I read The Snakes a few months ago I probably would have forgotten the title and only remembered bare bones memorable plot points. It is so hard to satiate and satisfy an audience today so unsatisfying endings will happen. We will all be better for it.
