Books with lousy endings

[Deckerd]

In line with the other threads going on here, I'd like to start off with two books which had utterly unsatisfactory endings, which made me conclude for a while that men just can't end books.

Louis de Berniere's Captain Corelli's Mandolin, and
Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

Anyone else harbouring bitterness at the injustice of it all?

 

[cultcross]

Well for the women's camp, and to lower the intellectual level of this debate before it even begins, the last Harry Potter. worst. ending. ever.

 

[Australis]

Ooo, ooo! I know this one. I had a library book called Descent, can't remember the author's name. Did some very creative stuff with Neanderthals survivng below the ground and becoming a threat to H. Sapiens in the modern day. Mental transference, tunnels under the ocean, and a shit scary opening sequence. Then, about 2/3 through, the wheels fell off. Stuff that was set up early in the story, which seemed so obvious it miust be a red herring, was actually the main game, and the concealed villain, when revealed, just weakened the story and end SO much. Seriously disappointed.

Another was The Rule of Four, which was supposed to be "this year's daVinci Code". Turns out it was - felt just as ripped off at the end iof it too.

 

[CheapTrick]

The ending to Thomas Harris' "Hannibal". I was SO dissappointed that we had to wait over a decade for the next book, and THAT is what we got. While the movie wasn't much better, at least they changed the ending.

 

[General Kang]

I've always thought that Michael Crichton does a pretty good job of setting up stories, but a not-so-good job of finishing them... I think that the fact that I can remember the set-up for most of his novels, but not the finish, is pretty telling.

 

[T'Bonz]

Three come to mind.

In high school, I had to read "The French Lieutenant's Woman".

Stephen King's "The Stand". Started out great. Petered out. Yuck.

My personal most frustrating one to read because of a lousy unfinished ending: "The Handmaid's Tale".

 

[The Lady Eve]

"Atonement" by Ian McEwan is a beautifully written if depressing novel. (I haven't seen the film yet.) Toward the end of the story it looks as if the author is going to give his long-suffering lovers a break. If you know McEwan's other work you really can't believe it and you'd be correct. McEwan throws the reader a curve ball and while the ending is artistically right it's still a downer because you've invested so much in the star-crossed lovers. Damn.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Swann's Way; okay, the whole book was a sleeping pill in literary form, but I just had to include it.

I can never make up my mind whether I like the way Chabon ended The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay; it's one of my favourite novels of all time, mainly for the prewar stuff, and half the time I think the postwar scenes are satisfactory, but other times I just don't like the ambiguous state he left the characters.

In the realm of children's literature, the Redwall book The Taggerung, after being a pretty decent entry in the adventure series most of the way through, resolves the main villain's threat to the Abbey by having the Long Patrol arrive with no build-up, which was annoying.

 

[Trippy]

"Atonement" by Ian McEwan is a beautifully written if depressing novel. (I haven't seen the film yet.) Toward the end of the story it looks as if the author is going to give his long-suffering lovers a break. If you know McEwan's other work you really can't believe it and you'd be correct. McEwan throws the reader a curve ball and while the ending is artistically right it's still a downer because you've invested so much in the star-crossed lovers. Damn.

With ya there...I was so-o-o-o pissed off at the ending!

 

[Twilight]

I too was really pissed off by the ending to HANNIBAL

It wanted to be shocking, but it was simply stupid. Utter character assassination of Starling, with no motivation whatsoever.

Believe it or not, the ending in the film was dramatically better.

 

[CaptainCanada]

The weird thing about the Hannibal Lecter franchise is that the original author succumbed far more thoroughly to Lecter's Fonzie-ization than the film series ever did, as evidenced by the ending to Hannibal.

 

[Jack Bauer]

I've always thought that Michael Crichton does a pretty good job of setting up stories, but a not-so-good job of finishing them... I think that the fact that I can remember the set-up for most of his novels, but not the finish, is pretty telling.

Yeah, the ending to Next wasn't that exciting. It just kind of petered out.

 

[Professor Zoom]

I know some will disagree...but the ending of the Golden Compass trilogy...each book got progressively worse.

So, for me, the third book was a crap ending.

 

[mimic]

I have to go with "Stranger in a Strange Land." I enjoyed the first half, but it quickly lost me when cults started forming. I also agree with Eve about "Atonement" and would add the last chapter in "The Prestige" (book!).

 

[ToddPence]

Irwin Shaw, "Acceptable Losses"

Shaw was probably the greatest American short story writer of the twentieth century, but his novels were decidedly not up to the standard set by his stories.

 

[sidious618]

The Stand by Stephen King and It by Stephen King. I'm a big King fan but those endings were unforgivable.

 

[The Fatman]

The Stand by Stephen King and It by Stephen King. I'm a big King fan but those endings were unforgivable.

See, now I will disagree about the ending of IT. As it's written, I have no problem with IT being a giant psychic prehistoric spider. I like the idea/reinforcement that Derry itself is so tied to IT that once IT's destroyed the town goes with it. I also find the very end, with everyone's memories fading, to be beautifully bittersweet.

 

[Lookingglassman]

I gotta agree The Stand's ending SUCKED! So basically God stops the devil from setting off a nuke. What? This was stupid as heck. So in other words God allows billions to die from a virus and the devil to leave a trail of carnage, but decides to intervene when the devil wants to nuke a few thousand folks?

 

[sidious618]

The Stand by Stephen King and It by Stephen King. I'm a big King fan but those endings were unforgivable.

See, now I will disagree about the ending of IT. As it's written, I have no problem with IT being a giant psychic prehistoric spider. I like the idea/reinforcement that Derry itself is so tied to IT that once IT's destroyed the town goes with it. I also find the very end, with everyone's memories fading, to be beautifully bittersweet.

I was more referring to the kids all having sex. It was just absurd. Although, It's origins were dumb, too, I thought.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. I just didn't get the whole part at the end with the young woman breastfeeding the old man.

I was none too satisfied with the endings of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency & The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams. His prose & exposition was always excellent. His plots were always either confusing or non-existent and he was rarely able to end a story well. Everything is finished too quickly and he often leaves some loose ends. (I'm still not sure exactly why Odin sold the power of the Norse gods to a group of hack record producers in Tea-Time.) Maybe it's for the best that Adams died before he could finish The Salmon of Doubt (or even get it started for that matter).

I also agree with Eve about "Atonement" and would add the last chapter in "The Prestige" (book!).

I never read the book version of The Prestige (but I loved the movie). What happens?