Books with twists and unexpected ends

[Hector]

All - To kick this off i'm interested in pulling together a list with books that have stigmatised you on the basis of having an unexpected end or being full of twists and turns throughout the book.... I'm starting first ... Jack London - Martin Eden

[Abigail]

Well, I have stigmatised the ending of Geraldine Brooks's Year of Wonders for coming out of left field, but it didn't stigmatise me.

[Gemma]

Life of Pi is the book that immediately springs to mind as having an ending that took many people by surprise.

[Rami]

" In the Miso Soup" of Ryu Murakami... unconventional ending i would say

[Anna]

I've found it hard to forgive Thomas Hardy for his ending of Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

[Abigail]

I find it hard to forgive Hardy at the best of times . . . :-)

[Anna]

Ah, Abigail. I'm glad I'm not the only one.

A reviewer once compared my writing to Thomas Hardy's. Half of me is quite chuffed, the other half is rather concerned.

[Abigail]

I can relate to that! A reader of the first novel in my putative historical series described the first chapter as Dickensian, and I knew she thought she was offering praise but it made me cringe! (I was actually aiming for a flavor of Dylan Thomas in an Austenesque setting.)

[Anna]

I love Thomas Hardy in one way: I get so absorbed in the lives of the characters but, truly, I flung 'Tess' across the room. I've never done that before or since with a book.

Dickens - sigh. What a story-teller to be compared with. I think you should jump for joy even if it was unintended.

[Hector]

I second Anna's view... Being compared to Dickens (!) is like a french being compared to balzac (similar in the notion that he analysed the parisian culture like dickensian london) or a russian to dostoevsky.. The pinnacle of compliments :)

[Abigail]

You're both very kind. I've always found Dickens a bit creepy, how he uses human imagery to describe objects and object metaphors to describe people.

The person may have been simply reacting to the large number of potential characters being introduced in the first scene--I was aiming for a panoramic overview of typical residents of the town where the story is set, along the lines of Under Milk Wood, but it made me worry that readers were going to feel they had to master all those character names and who they all were, when in fact none of them was in any way central to the story. The perils of seeking early feedback! Leads to a lot of paralysing self-doubt.

[Liz, Your Friendly Moderator]

I know what you mean about 'Tess of the D'urbevilles', but luckily I had been warned and was fairly well prepared for what was to come... Thomas Hardy wrote beautifully, but he was certainly an old misery-guts. Thankfully 'Far from the Madding Crowd' has a satisfying ending. I haven't dared go near 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' let alone 'Jude the Obscure' - my mother again warned me about both! I saw the Christopher Eccleston, Kate Winslet 'Jude' in the cinema when it came out - harrowing.

(BTW I love Dickens - his meandering plots, his atmospheric descriptions and his entertaining characters.)

[Liz, Your Friendly Moderator]

I've been wracking my brains to remind myself of a book that really made me think 'No!' at the proffered ending.

It has happened several times over the years, but the most recent was: 'Tulip Fever'. The book has a beautiful grasp of 17th century Amsterdam and weaves an absorbing story, until one character does something so supremely stupid (setting in motion the inevitable consequences) that I shouted angrily at the book and threw it across the room. It was a while before I had calmed down sufficiently to conclude the final chapters - grrrh!