Mislabeled boxes, problems with visiting nurses, confusing notes, an outing to the county fair--such are the obstacles in the way of the unnamed na...
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reviews
Jan 12, 2012
K.D.
rated it: 
There is some kind of style in this book that made me like it. That style is strange and I did not know how Davis was able to walk away with it.
(1) No plot
(2) No dialogues
(3) Started the 1st person narration ("unreliable") with the ending of the story
(4) Time period went back and forth with no pattern
(5) Unnecessary characters, events, musings
It’s an endless recollection of the unnamed narration’s failed love story with a man 12 years her senior. More...
(1) No plot
(2) No dialogues
(3) Started the 1st person narration ("unreliable") with the ending of the story
(4) Time period went back and forth with no pattern
(5) Unnecessary characters, events, musings
It’s an endless recollection of the unnamed narration’s failed love story with a man 12 years her senior. More...
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Jun 24, 2008
Ryan
rated it:
One of the few books I come back to over and over again. I have never read anything quite like this nearly plotless, dialogue-less book detailing the slow decline of a relationship. The tone is hauntingly lonely and there is never a question about where the narrative is headed, but the observations are so smart and the sentences so well-crafted that I highly recommend this book to those interested in reading about the small nuances of desperate, yet honest love.
Dec 17, 2009
Nathanial
rated it: 
just because. just because the sentences don't end, like the landscapes. because the mix of how she moves from thoughts to deeds, place to past, memories to wish. it doesn't have to be that way, the words we said didn't have to be the words we said, the way he carries his shoulders and head don't begin to describe the longing that resides inside, when the sound of a whisker scratches the surface of a page he's reading in the back room, where kitchen tiles stack on the paint-spattered counter
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Jan 05, 2012
Christina Marie
rated it:
How much do I adore Lydia Davis? I like her writing because no one is able to categorize it. Sometimes a work of hers that appears in a prose magazine will also appear in a poetry magazine--the same exact piece of writing. I love that. Some libraries list her stuff as personal essays while others have it in the fiction section.
The End Of The Story is definitely a novel. I know that because the narrator keeps referring to what she's writing as a novel and the novel she's writing is t More...
The End Of The Story is definitely a novel. I know that because the narrator keeps referring to what she's writing as a novel and the novel she's writing is t More...
Sep 01, 2011
As a break from the theoretical turn Evening All Afternoon has been taking of late, let me rhapsodize straightforwardly about the numerous things I love in the writing of Lydia Davis. In particular, I've just finished her 2004 The End of the Story, which treats of the end, beginning, and aftermath (in that order) of a love affair, and also of the process of transforming that love affair into a novel.
I was particularly intrigued to pick up Davis's novel, as her stories tend to the More...
I was particularly intrigued to pick up Davis's novel, as her stories tend to the More...
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Aug 11, 2010
Zach
rated it: 
1. Who would have guessed that an overly self-conscious novel about a self-conscious character/narrator/author writing a novel about the self-conscious remembrance of a failed love affair would be boring and eye-roll-worthy and self-involved? Just kidding, anyone could have guessed that.
2. A quote: Vincent (husband of the unnamed narrator [whose name is presumably Lydia Davis... it's that kind of book:] in the portion of the story in which this novel is being written, you follow?) ha More...
2. A quote: Vincent (husband of the unnamed narrator [whose name is presumably Lydia Davis... it's that kind of book:] in the portion of the story in which this novel is being written, you follow?) ha More...
Feb 02, 2010
Alison
rated it:
A good book for people who are giving themselves hives imagining the ridiculous questions that they might, someday, be asked about their own work at a Q&A session--because most of us won't be asked anything so ridiculous as Davis was probably asked after her readings of this book. A fictional essay, a What We Talk About When We Talk About Writing Love Stories kind of story. How do we begin talking about a _____ (fill in the blank: a love affair, say), and how do we end? How do emotions graph
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Dec 10, 2008
Adam
rated it:
There's a careful winding-up and unwinding of this story that's really reminiscent of David Markson's work, except he does it on a sentence-by-sentence level (with an exacto knife) while Davis does it gradually, slowly, over the course of everything. Something that reads surgical and clean, but not distant or unforgiving, permeates this novel. In a way this is the other side of the "Wittgenstein's Mistress" coin - the manner in which all the story he left out was physically left out le
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3 comments
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(1 person liked it)
Dec 21, 2011
Emilia
rated it:
Eh...
Another reason, maybe even more important, is that this cup of tea, prepared for me by a stranger to give me some relief from my exhaustion, was not only a gesture of kindness, from a person who could not know what my trouble was, but also a ceremonial act, as though the offer of a cup of tea became a ceremonial act as soon as there was a reason for ceremony, even if the tea was cheap and bitter, with a paper tab hanging over the side of the mug. And since all along there had been More...
Another reason, maybe even more important, is that this cup of tea, prepared for me by a stranger to give me some relief from my exhaustion, was not only a gesture of kindness, from a person who could not know what my trouble was, but also a ceremonial act, as though the offer of a cup of tea became a ceremonial act as soon as there was a reason for ceremony, even if the tea was cheap and bitter, with a paper tab hanging over the side of the mug. And since all along there had been More...
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Apr 04, 2009
Libby
rated it:
What's so wrong with being a revisionist?
Wait (hand up)--I know, I know. Revisionism distorts history; is dangerous ethically, morally, and politically; weakens the structure of the testimonial; subjects fact to well... subjectivity; allows for hateful liars to spread self-replicating viruses of misinformation, seeding them in our culture, spores polluting the transmission of that which we must not forget. Serious business.
But... on the small scale? Aren't we all revision More...
Wait (hand up)--I know, I know. Revisionism distorts history; is dangerous ethically, morally, and politically; weakens the structure of the testimonial; subjects fact to well... subjectivity; allows for hateful liars to spread self-replicating viruses of misinformation, seeding them in our culture, spores polluting the transmission of that which we must not forget. Serious business.
But... on the small scale? Aren't we all revision More...
Sep 06, 2011
S.B.
rated it:
It seems like every sentence in this book was carefully constructed to convey the maximum amount of sadness any person has ever felt in the history of people feeling sad. I tried reading this once before and couldn't get past the whole 'story about writing a story' thing and Davis's style of writing was so extremely different than what I'm used to that I put it away for later when I could appreciate it. This time, I found it just as difficult and demanding and, at times, unfathomably boring as i
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Aug 11, 2010
thegift
rated it:
this is an experimental novel in which the focus never leaves the ruminations, actions, and obsessions, of a woman recalling her relationship with a younger man when she was in her thirties and he 22. she is trying after the fact to understand, to remember, to write about, that period in her life for 231 unbroken pages. there is little said, no dialog, no linear and little of any plot, much reworking and thinking about him and her, many attempts at comprehension, ultimate recognition that this
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Jan 21, 2009
Okay, I'm starting this book tonight, and am frankly a little nervous. I only got this book from the library because I heard a snippet of the author's short story being read on the radio and it stopped. me. in. my. tracks. It felt like the radio and snuck up and stolen my feelings (and from the reviews on NPR, it wasn't just me...I must make a note not to feel so unique all the time, sets me up for dissapointment). Anyway, looks to be a thoughtful, melancholic book...and currently I'm hoping
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Dec 10, 2010
Mike
rated it: 
A tedious read. Not recommended for those who don't have the patience for experimental writing. Or patience for unnecessarily lengthy descriptions that pop up every few pages.
Essentially this is a novel written about the PROCESS of writing a novel BASED on a past relationship. Got it? Our protagonist is a unnamed woman somewhere in her 30s getting involved with a young 20 something student. The relationship ends, and as a sort of therapy she wants to transcribe the relationship to nove More...
Essentially this is a novel written about the PROCESS of writing a novel BASED on a past relationship. Got it? Our protagonist is a unnamed woman somewhere in her 30s getting involved with a young 20 something student. The relationship ends, and as a sort of therapy she wants to transcribe the relationship to nove More...
Jan 13, 2010
Not so much currently reading as currently-not-reading for me... I had it from the library for months and had to return it before finishing it. Despite it's shortness it's a heavy book with a structure to test your tolerance for experimental narrative. Telling about the plot seems arbitrary, basically it's about the end of a quite mundane relationship. But the point of the story is more in the structure, the way she writes, the writing process of writing out the end of a love story. On certain d
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May 27, 2009
Sarah
rated it:
i've seriously been reading this book for months. it is about a woman writer who describes the process of remembering and writing about her last kind of slow and mundane relationship. i pull it out whenever i am going through some kind of melancholy mood myself, read a chapter or two, remember that the story is kind of repetitive and has no plot but is beautifully written, and set it aside for some other time i need someone to feel my pain. it's really fascinating and beautiful, but is a little
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Aug 02, 2009
Debbie (Readerbuzz)
rated it:
I’ve been reading on this book for seven or eight months. It’s an experimental novel, with the main character attempting to remember every event of her relationship with a man, starting with the last first. The end of the story is really the beginning. Fun to start, like most gimmicks, but grew quite wearing. Where did this author go for her degree in creative writing?
Dec 14, 2011
David
rated it:
I liked this book a lot. There is, as several reviewers mention, no dialog, the narrator is in my eyes extremely self-absorbed/unlikable, but Davis has done an exceptional job of excavating some key aspects of how people live on for us after our most immediate connection to them is lost.
That the narrator seems unreliable and even unsure of the "facts" of the failed relationship the book describes only heightened my awareness that all of our memories work that way. Unlike nar More...
That the narrator seems unreliable and even unsure of the "facts" of the failed relationship the book describes only heightened my awareness that all of our memories work that way. Unlike nar More...
Apr 16, 2008
Marissa
rated it: 
Something I'm really trying to get into -haven't quite managed- is the idea that a novel doesn't need a plot. Lydia Davis asks the reader to engage her in a dialogue, and you do feel at first inclined...to her credit, I do enjoy her surgical deconstruction of relationships and obsessions. And yet...
I just picked up some of her short stories and it seems to me as though Davis' work is careful not to involve her audience in the kind of gratification employed by some of her colleagues in the More...
I just picked up some of her short stories and it seems to me as though Davis' work is careful not to involve her audience in the kind of gratification employed by some of her colleagues in the More...
Feb 04, 2010
Karen
rated it:
I'm giving this a three because it is a difficult book to like, but an important book to love because here Davis fearlessly confronts the process of resurrecting narrative from our emotional past. It's a dissection, really, of the mind's attempt to make linear sense of the heart, the arm's length of what we call love, the deeper romance of despair. Important for anyone who thinks they write nonfiction, or who thinks they write fiction, or who thinks.
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Dec 05, 2007
Toshio
rated it:
This book is definitely not for everyone. No real 'plot' and very little characterization. A very pschyoanalytic, cerebral work that I'm surprised I enjoyed as much as I did.
But, wow. Her sentences are amazing. Such depth, variation in tone, syntax, grammatical structure and length as well as a blunt but beautiful use of repetition; and just wonderful descriptions of what it's like to remember lost love.
"This seemed to me, in a way, the best moment of all, when it h More...
But, wow. Her sentences are amazing. Such depth, variation in tone, syntax, grammatical structure and length as well as a blunt but beautiful use of repetition; and just wonderful descriptions of what it's like to remember lost love.
"This seemed to me, in a way, the best moment of all, when it h More...
May 25, 2010
Sections of this book read as wonderfully as Davis's short fiction / prose poems, and the overall concept here pulled me in. I'm into meta-stories, I suppose, and this is a good one -- but maybe stays in the head too long? Whose head?
Jan 27, 2010
Jamie
rated it:
Stephen told me the other day I wasn’t a sensitive person and I was all, “Yes I am,” confusing ‘sensitive’ with ‘perceptive’ and ‘thoughtful’ and then started adding, “Just because I’m not going to sit around and blah blah blah feelings all day and cry over puppies and care about things that are just stupid and,” needless to say he was all, “Point proven.” I guess this furthers his cause, as some of the sentences were stabbingly beautiful and I’m always interested in the exploration of faulty m
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Jan 03, 2010
Josh!
rated it:
When I started reading this I (probably predictably) thought this was like the most genius thing ever. A book about writing a book about a breakup as a study in memory, what could go wrong there? Was awesome for about 150 pages. I gave up after almost 200, maybe I should have stuck in there, but then again maybe their is a reason Lydia Davis is known for her itty-bitty short stories...
Aug 18, 2011
Christin
rated it:
By far, The End of the Story is the best book I've read this year. If the writing weren't so fabulous it would most certainly depress me, but mainly because I myself am with a younger man and too many of the narrator's truths are my own. Anglo-Saxon diction, clarity, voice...this novel reads like a fine essay. A wholly fascinating book!
Jun 19, 2011
Woody
rated it:
Fascinating novel about writing an autobiographical novel that charts the beginning, middle and end of an existential love affair, with literature as well as with another person.
Dec 26, 2007
Kristin
rated it:
I admire her craft, and the voice of the narrator was very compelling; if it hadn't been, I wouldn't have finished it.
The novel is definitely an experiment: a mix between a narrative about writing a novel, writing a novel about a relationship, relationships and "the" relationship in general. I enjoy that in theory, and I don't expect "exciting" plots by any means, but this was dull throughout. All plateau and no hills; which, again, may not make a poor novel, More...
The novel is definitely an experiment: a mix between a narrative about writing a novel, writing a novel about a relationship, relationships and "the" relationship in general. I enjoy that in theory, and I don't expect "exciting" plots by any means, but this was dull throughout. All plateau and no hills; which, again, may not make a poor novel, More...
Oct 29, 2009
Alastair
rated it:
Some excellent writing -- truly wonderful & evocative short passages -- mixed with much typing. But when I re-read a section, which is which?
Jul 20, 2010
Lauren
rated it:
A very pretty book with a very interesting take on a subject that was relevant to my interest at the time, unfortunately given from the point of view of a very annoying woman.
