C. L. Norman

I am finicky about those pesky endings. If the ending isn’t nearly perfect, it ruins the whole story for me.

I am a sucker for a happy ending. Especially one in which the girl gets her man or vice versa and everyone lives happily ever after. Or at least until the sequel.

I have found that some books very carefully craft the romance subplot so at the end when the hero and heroine get together it is a wonderful moment in the story. Others that I have read don’t seed the romantic relationship well enough through the story and when they get to the end they randomly pair up everybody. Like the end of The Pirate Movie, “You and you, and you and you…” etc. I prefer a romance to be a fully realized subplot and not an afterthought.

Years ago I read a book by one of my favorite authors which should have ended fifty pages earlier than it did. The book was about 200 pages long and the day was saved and the problem solved by page 150 but instead of ending it, the book continued on for another 50 pages in a grand celebration of their victory over their problems.  I didn’t need to read about the characters patting themselves on the back for that length of time and almost didn’t finish the book because of the lack of tension or action.

Another ending I am disatisfied with is the one for The Lord of the Rings. You can join the line right behind my husband in calling me a “blasphemer” for not liking The Lord of the Rings. And the problem for me was the ending. If the ending drives me crazy, it ruins the whole story for me. Seeing Frodo whine and wish for his return to home, both his physical home and “normalcy,” was part of Frodo’s appeal. He was thrust into events for which he was unprepared but he had to participate in for any hope to return to home. However at the end, after just a few months home, he leaves again. This time for a more permanent destination. If he left again to travel the lands and see his friends from the fellowship, I could see that. The events just past did change him. But he leaves everything and everyone he knows behind and I just can’t reconcile that with his character. And so the books are ruined for me.

The movie Titanic also had one of those endings that just barely saves itself from being ruined for me. I expected both Jack and Rose to either both die or both live. Since the story was set up as a very long flashback, of course one of them had to survive. And really it doesn’t make sense that both would survive that tragedy but as I said before, I am a sucker for a happy ending and I wanted Jack and Rose to end up together, alive or dead. The dream sequence at the end of the movie puts the two together again and just barely saves it for me.

What are your favorite endings? and what endings bother you?