The Controversial Ending & How We Broke Up

Note: This post contains spoilers regarding the conclusion of  This Book Does Not Exist . If you would prefer to be surprised by the resolution, and you have not yet read the book, don’t read anything past this word. 

I’m learning something about the end of my book: It has polarized readers. Namely, those who have taken the time to either write me or review the work on Amazon seem to fall into two camps. One group responds enthusiastically to the imperfect but optimistic conclusion, which acknowledges that even when things fail to work out how we imagine they should, hope can still be found elsewhere. The other camp is disappointed, I think, that Mike’s love for Naomi does not in fact conquer all. They wish Mike and Naomi would have gotten back together. They want Naomi to put her issues with Mike in concrete terms. They want romance and sunsets and weddings and children and probably puppies too.

While I completely understand the emotion behind wanting a fairytale ending, such a resolution would have been impossible for me to write. My relationship, with a girl I believed at the time was the love of my life, did not end well. It started to fracture and then it shattered. We tried to put it back together… We tried so hard, and we failed. The broken pieces cut us both. We bled along the way. First and foremost, in writing the novel - a combination of memoir and fiction - I had to stay true to my own experience and my own emotions. I had to figure out what happened in order to survive losing the person who had become my best friend. And as I searched for reasons why we didn’t make it, I realized there was no reason. At least, there was no specific event. Nobody cheated. It was circumstance that got in the way. We grew older. Our interests evolved. Our personalities shifted. We wanted slightly different things than when we met. At one point it seemed as if we were meant to be, and at another - after all kinds of yelling and name calling and terrible shit, even after we yet again found peace - suddenly we weren’t. The relationship wasn’t broken by a sledgehammer; instead it was dissolved by a haze, something vague and threatening that could be felt and witnessed but not explained.

Ultimately then, the only choice I had was to write from my perspective, to tell a story for people like me, for those who had gone through a breakup, who knew the relationship they endeared was over and now they were stranded, scared, and depressed, hoping for some sign that they could be okay. I wanted them to understand, as I had after I finished writing the book, that this too would pass, that someone else would arrive, that happiness would again be found, that life is all about peaks and valleys and the goal is to not quit while you’re languishing at the bottom. 

I thought that was an inspirational ending. I find it fascinating that for some readers it was in actuality a disappointment.