Does the ending of a book matter to you?

[Raven Falcon.]

I have read many great books; most of them aren't great with their endings. That does not degrade my overall impression of those books still. Maybe it is a little bit disappointing to discover that the closure of the book with which you have been completely absorbed over a particular span of time does not live up to your anticipation. Although such is the case with me, the disappointment is ephemeral usually. As time passes, I would reminisce on the great moments and ponder the depth of the book.

A great ending, though, can lift my mind to a higher plane for a while (few minutes). Upon returning to my senses, I would ponder the ending, reread it, and
take a walk outside, only to come back and read the ending again -word by word.

The ending to The Great Gatsby is such an ending.

[PeterL]

A goos ending is good, but too many novels do not have any ral ening, and that is annoying.

[cacian]

yes it matters because one tends to remember the end more then the beginning ,logically speaking because it is the last thing one reads.

[RicMisc]

To me a book's ending is very important because it's the thing you work towards the entire time. If I really like a book and the ending is not satisfactory that ending will leave a mark on my final impression of the book. I'm not saying it makes or breaks a book but after a good book I like to close it off well. And, as cacian said, one tends to remember the end more than the beginning.

[hawthorns]

I used to. Now, what happens at a conclusion is of little importance when compared its style, execution and compatibility to what preceded it.

In contrast, for me Gatsby was insufferable--until its last wonderful line :p. I'll have to try his other works.

[Alexander III]

A great ending, though, can lift my mind to a higher plane for a while (few minutes). Upon returning to my senses, I would ponder the ending, reread it, and
take a walk outside, only to come back and read the ending again -word by word.


Ha! I do the exact same thing. Word for word, I do the same thing hehe.

[blazeofglory]

I find in great many readers a kind of fetishism with good endings. Simply good beginnings and endings do not make books fascinating and what really matter is the way in which the entire book gets you adrift. Read Anna Karenina for instance we have little to do with its endings. The entire novel has a beauty of its own and that is why it has always been a masterpiece and has both the great critical acclaim and readerships few other books have got.

[stlukesguild]

There are of course any number of great books with absolutely brilliant endings:

“The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

…I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the
Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the
Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
–James Joyce, Ulysses

‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.’
–Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic
sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.
–Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

L--d! said my mother, what is all this story about?——
A **** and a BULL, said Yorick——And one of the best of its kind I ever
heard.
–Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

“All that is very well,” answered Candide, “but let us cultivate our garden.”
–Voltaire, Candide

From the sky a swift Angel descends, an Angel with a golden helmet and green
spurs, a flaming sword in his hand, an Angel escaped from the Indo-Hispanic altars
of opulent hunger, from need overcome by sleep, from the coupling of opposites:
body and soul, wakefulness and death, living and sleeping, remembering and
desiring, imagining: the happy boy who reaches the sad land carries all this on his
lips, he bears the memory of death, white and extinguished, like the flame that went
out in his mother’s belly: for a swift, marvelous instant, the boy being born knows
that this light of memory, wisdom, and death was an Angel and that this other Angel
who flies from the navel of heaven with the sword in his hand is the fraternal enemy
of the first: he is the Baroque Angel, with a sword in his hand and quetzal wings,
and a serpent doublet, and a golden helmet, the Angel strikes, strikes the lips of the
boy being born on the beach: the burning and painful sword strikes his lips and the
boy forgets, he forgets everything forgets everything,
f
o
r
g
e
t
s

–Carlos Fuentes, Christopher Unborn

Just a few examples of brilliant closing lines. But certainly many of the finest novels are not so perfectly wrapped up. Some ramble a bit. Some are anti-climactic... the climax of the narrative having been reached far earlier. Whether the ending is one of the most memorable moments of a book or not, however, seems irrelevant to me. I do not read with the goal of coming to the ending and/or grasping the "meaning". I read for the pleasure of the experience of the book as a whole. A weak ending will no more mar a great book in my esteem than will a brilliant ending salvage a book that was a shipwreck up to that point.

“What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.”
- Italo Calvino

As with lovemaking... as with our journey through life itself... it would seem to me that when it comes to reading, it is the experience as a whole that is to be savored... not merely the ending.

[KCurtis]

I have read many great books; most of them aren't great with their endings. That does not degrade my overall impression of those books still. Maybe it is a little bit disappointing to discover that the closure of the book with which you have been completely absorbed over a particular span of time does not live up to your anticipation. Although such is the case with me, the disappointment is ephemeral usually. As time passes, I would reminisce on the great moments and ponder the depth of the book.

A great ending, though, can lift my mind to a higher plane for a while (few minutes). Upon returning to my senses, I would ponder the ending, reread it, and
take a walk outside, only to come back and read the ending again -word by word.

The ending to The Great Gatsby is such an ending.

I also reacted the same way you did at the Great Gatsby ending, I went back and re-read, twice. It just made me sad. But I can't think of a better ending. Great novel endings are always disappointing to me- I'm always sad when the book ends.

[Tallulah]

I find in great many readers a kind of fetishism with good endings. Simply good beginnings and endings do not make books fascinating and what really matter is the way in which the entire book gets you adrift. Read Anna Karenina for instance we have little to do with its endings. The entire novel has a beauty of its own and that is why it has always been a masterpiece and has both the great critical acclaim and readerships few other books have got.

I agree with this. When I first read this thread my initial reaction was "of course the ending is important". But, after thinking about it for a while, I realized that I don't necessarily remember the last lines of my favorite books. Those books are my favorites because of the overall story, not just the first and last pages.`

[Oblivion]

The ending is very important to me. It's the point which would make me doubly like the the novel or doubly dislike it.

[blazeofglory]

I agree with this. When I first read this thread my initial reaction was "of course the ending is important". But, after thinking about it for a while, I realized that I don't necessarily remember the last lines of my favorite books. Those books are my favorites because of the overall story, not just the first and last pages.`

Yes, in fact one of the great books in which the ending does not matter is the brothers karamazov. The book is singularly great and the fabulous things we come across from beginning to end make me think our obsession with ending of the book becmes insignificant

[Greatone]

not as much as beginning i think !

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Yes, it does.

And, StLukes, I'd add the final paragraph of Blood Meridian to that list.

[ryanvision]

I believe the ending needs to conclude a story appropriately. There is a certain cohesion that comes from a great ending, and without it, it really soils the entire work.

On a side note, an excellent ending can make one respect an author more. If a novel ends brilliantly, even if the preceding to that ending was mediocre at best, there is a certain special charm to that and you end up looking at the author and the book in a much better light.

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

A great ending can save a mediocre novel while a bad ending can ruin a good one, in my opinion.

[Helga]

A good ending is important but that doesn't mean it has to be a happy ending or really an ending, I love cliff hangers. The ending of Voltaires Candide is really really good.

[Delta40]

I think the ending matters because it is the final impression which is left upon me. I can still say whether I enjoyed most of the book, however it will be followed by a 'but'. It's like watching a drama series that is suspenseful all the way through only to find the ending is rushed and anti-climatic. Sure the story was great and so was the acting but one feels short changed and that is what I will remember most.

[Big Dante]

A Farewell To Arms in one of my favourite novels but that ending completely bums me out. It's not that I don't like it but it is such a downer on such a fun story.

[Italian83]

Id also depends on what kind of reader you are...
Speaking for myself, in general, I am one of those persons to whom the journey matters even more than its destination...
Speaking of novels, though, there exist different types of endings... Some endings do really describe the way things come to an end, some others are just the final assertion of something that we've already understood through "the journey"...
When I was in college and used to translate greek "mythoi", there was a typical ending which was "kai ho mythos deloi oti..." which in English means "and the tale demonstrates that..." followed by the final declaration which describes what point the author was trying to make with the whole story.

[susancollins]

Yes some times i feel like why the authors ending the story so fast.

[Sancho Panza]

Because reading a book requires such a commitment of time when compared to other media, ie films, one wants to be rewarded for that commitment with a worthwhile ending. Of course, when a book is so good that you don't want it to end, then sometimes its conclusion cannot help but be disappointing (take Don Quixote for example whose fantastic ending grieved me because I never wanted to reach it).

When a book is part of a series, then the ending becomes even more important, because it has to conlude its part of the story while leaving enough for the reader to want the next installment, something Proust was an expert at.

Though less important than the beginning, at least from the author's point of view, a decent ending, which as has already been pointed out is the last thing one remembers about a book, can be the thing that makes an author's career, provided they can write more of them.

The End.

[Venerable Bede]

I think the ending matters a lot. There are many great books that have mediocre or disappointing endings, but I see that as a flaw in an otherwise great book. A bad ending hurts a book; not enough to ruin it, but it does lessen its greatness.

[JamCrackers]

I agree a bad ending is a big deal. My thoughts come from a video game called MASS EFFECT. The first two especially the second were deeply moving. Like a novel, you grow to love these characters; you are emotionally involved. If at the very end, the ending of the story is bad, it hurts. It not only hurts in itself, it poisons all the feelings you had from before. I have heard it said, like the original ending of the movie Dodge Ball, that it was artsy and a clever change to have a bad ending that makes you leave angry and upset. I believe the story teller is a sacred profession. A story teller should never forget the audience. Making me love your book then snatching it away at the ending is simply cruel. A book with a bad ending is like a joke with a bad punchline. Something was seriously wrong.

[stlukesguild]

I think we must remember that a great novel... or narrative of any form... does not always come to its climax in the very last paragraph. Shakespeare often does so. Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities does as does Homer's Odyssey and as MM pointed out, McCarthy's Blood Meridian comes to such a climax. But we might recognize that just as a grand symphony need not always come to a great crashing climax in the final moments, so it is the same of a narrative. In some books the climax has been reached... followed by moments of of reflection... or perhaps a quiet return to things as they were. I am hard-pressed to think of a truly horrible ending... at least not in any book I found worth reading to start with... although I'm certain that such exist.

[JamCrackers]

Sadly, I think the fame of a dead man's deeds can die. Imagine a long road of statues. Each statue was a great person, a true hero. In their time, they were so loved, so important. Now imagine you lived in that past and knew some of those people. Later you walk the road. You know each statue is important. At the ones of people you knew and loved, you stop to cry; you drink to their name. For those you did not know, you of all people understand they were great and their memory sacred, but you also know, it is not the same. You did not know them. As much as you want to love those champions of life that you never met, you can't. I think the best we can do is try, to pause and give honors to forgotten heroes. If you were not there, the true meaning can never be felt.

[hawthorns]

Honestly, the ending hardly matters to me anymore. To me, they neither rescue a poor novel nor ruin a good one. I'm much more affected by the previous 90 percent. The beginnings are another matter, as I have a bad habit of being finicky at the outset. The good thing is that if it's well written it will tend to "call" me back. That happened a lot with Borges, Joyce, Proust, Baudelaire, and Calvino for me. Now they're some of my favorite works.