I was reminded of this by the “disturbing books.” thread. Someone mentioned that they had started The Wasp Factory, but found it so disturbing they had to stop 3/4 of the way through.
An ex-BF of mine thought this was the greatest book ever and suggested I read it. I got to reading, and thought it was pretty good, a little over the top maybe, but well written. And then I got to the end, and had to tell my XBF “That was the dumbest thing ever put to paper.” I was actually offended at how dumb the end was, and how it made a seemingly decent book feel like an utter waste of time.
Spoiler for those who are wondering. Highlight to read.
Main character (pre-teen boy) has all these aggression issues on account of how the dog emasculated him as achild. He’s always killing things and causing things pain (presumably to prove his “maleness”). At the very end its reveals that he’s actually a girl and the whole thing was an experiment formulated by her father (an eleaborate hoax.) Oh, and the main character basically says “Oh if I’d have just known I was a girl I never would have hurt/killed/been obsessed with pain and killing.” STUPID STUPID STUPID
I really enjoyed the three Neil Stephenson books I read but he needs to finding an ending other than “And then there was a big riot for no reason and all the characters met and then oh crap I’m out of room-”
Well, Thomas Harris’ novel Hannibal springs to mind. The last twenty pages or so made me feel like I’d wasted my time with the rest of the book. (Of course, this is just my opinion; it might be argued that the ending took a daring artistic direction, but I think it just doesn’t make sense in terms of a) the characters as already established and b) anything that could happen in reality.)
There’s a novel called Stone City, set in a huge prison, that was very involving, but the events of the last couple of pages make for a very depressing ending. I can’t really fault the author; although the ending is shocking, it’s essentially set up hundreds of pages earlier. It’s just that it took those hundreds of pages to get me to really sympathize with the protagonist, and then something horrible happens.
I don’t know if this counts, but I started reading James Robinson’s ‘Starman’ comic and really enjoyed it. Then suddenly it started to slow down - six issues would go by where very little happened. Around this time he announced the book would be ending soon.
I stuck with it until the end, when he gave a huge ‘fuck you’ to all the readers. Basically, the mantle of Starman was being passed down. He went and talked to all these characters from the book, and finally hands over the title to – someone who had never appeared in the book before. What, you weren’t reading a different DC comic or a certain miniseries? You’ve no idea who this person is that he brought in at the last moment? Well serves you right for ONLY reading 80 issues of THIS comic. I felt really cheated by this.
Most of Steven King’s books are guilty of this (such as It, in which the evil entity turns out to be…a giant spider from outerspace).
King is unbelievably good (for such a popular, mainstream writer, anyway) at fleshing out his characters, providing them with detailed histories and giving great insight into their psyches. And he’s equally good at building suspense when immersing his characters in some supernatural shenanigans.
His endings, however, tend to wrap things up rather quickly and tritely. Like finding out that the nemisis you’ve spent building up a wicked fear of over the last 3 or 4 hundred pages turns out to be A GIANT SPIDER FROM OUTERSPACE?
Heinlein’s The Cat That Walked Through Walls is the single-most disappointing book I’ve ever read. Absolutely fantastic start had me hooked and unable to stop reading…
…and then Lazarus Long showed up. The last third of the book is pure dreck.
Yeah Stephen King! I read the title of this thread and Stephen King jumped into my head. I think it’s cos he creates these amazingly unreal things and he really hasnt a hope in hell of making them end in a decent way.
Damn, Kirkland beat me to that. I love Michael Crichton’s plots, but they usually end bad. Especially Timeline. I was with him right till the end, when the author gave a resolution that I didn’t even feel needed resolving. Let’s just say the punishment don’t fit the crime.
On the other hand, I liked Jurassic Park all the way through and have read it multiple times. Congo, however, started badly, ended badly, and even middled badly. Yech.
No, that wasn’t it at all. It had been around since the dawn of time (remember when the kids sat in the smoky underground cave and had visions?). It may have fallen to the sky as the earth was “being born,” but I don’t think it was an alien exactly.
Also, it wasn’t a spider anymore than it was a clown. Remember when Henry Bowers and his friend chased the kids into the sewers? It came through the pipe and ate his friend. All Stan saw were lights, but Henry Bowers saw what it really was. His hair turned white and he went completely insane. Seeing it as a clown (as kids) and a spider (as adults) was a defense mechanism. Their minds couldn’t handle seeing It in its true, purely evil form.
I would have to vote for Son of Rosemary by Ira Levin. Started out pretty good, kept me interested, and then at the end he used one of the oldest, most ridiculous endings ever put to paper or film. It not only negated the entire book, but also Rosemary’s Baby as well.
I will never read anything by Ira Levin ever again after that.
I have to agree. His early stuff is good, but the later stuff is just God-awful. Well, not all of it (The Green Mile and Bag of Bones are good), but some of it, gah, it starts out really good but just snowballs out of control. I’m thinking of specifically, Insomnia, Dreamcatcher, Hearts In Atlantis, The Tommyknockers, what else? Dreamcatcher was especially bad. It started out really good, but about halfway through, you could tell he somehow lost control of the story, and it was careening all over the place. Ugh. I couldn’t even keep up with it in places. I hated the end. I was disgusted with wasting my time reading it.
I will agree with you 100% on Son of Rosemary. But give Levin another try. He also wrote This Perfect Day, The Boys From Brazil, The Stepfrod Wives, and A Kiss Before Dying. They’re all good books. Skip Sliver. It was pretty dumb. This Perfect Day is really good. Like 1984, but much better, IMHO. Scarier, but in a sneakier, more subtle way.
This is an obvious one, so I’m not surprised someone beat me to it.
I don’t think the ending took a “daring artistic direction.” Rather, Thomas Harris was thumbing his nose at Hollywood and at viewers who had turned Hannibal Lecter into some sort of anti-hero. That’s a good subject for a short spoof or satire, not a good idea for an ending to a novel.
I don’t know if this counts, but I would add A King of Infinite Space by Allen Steele
It has an absolutely wonderful first chapter. Smart, witty, funny monologue about the protagonist’s life and his outlook on the world around him. From chapter 2 on, the book is just mediocre and formulaic. Either the first chapter was written by someone else or Steele blew his wad in the first five pages.