# Books with disappointing endings (spoilers, obviously) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 11, 2009, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137 "2009-03-11T22:03:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Dante](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dante/32/9673_2.png) [@Dante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dante)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2009, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/61 "2009-03-13T14:38:18Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Dante: as I recall _Jaws_, the shark didn’t die, it just went away in that random, miondless killing machine way. I just re-read it, and I can see how it could be interpreted that way. I think I thought it ended the way it did is because of one phrase: The fish was nearly touching him, only a foot or two away, but it had **stopped**. And then, as Brody watched, the steel-gray body began to recede downward into the gloom.The word I highlighted is why I came up with my interpretation. Either way, it’s still a stupid ending. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2009, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/62 "2009-03-13T14:46:00Z")
**The Little Friend** by Donna Tart What is the point of having the main character and her friend spend all summer trying to figure out who murdered her older brother, if the mystery is never, ever solved? It was the focus of the whole damn book! As with many other readers, I was left wondering why her editor accepted the manuscript without the last chapter. I suspect that the author figured that the point of the ending was to show something about the main character, or how life works out that way sometimes, but it merely highlighted failing story-telling 101. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2009, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/63 "2009-03-13T22:36:43Z")
> [@Noel\_Prosequi](#): > > _Foucault’s Pendulum_. Yeah, I get the spoof factor. But the climax that all the conspiracies are aiming towards is > > a giant power generator? > > WTF? > > These people have invented immortality and magic as “mere” research by-products along the road to > > power generation? > > Just ripped me out of the whole thing, spoof factor or no. I am sure everyone can conjure endless metaphorical “justifications” for it (as can I), it just didn’t work for me as storytelling. I don’t think you’re remembering the book correctly, because what you describe is not the ending. The notion that the Holy Grail is really (I don’t think this even needs to be spoiler boxed, but since you did it I’ll keep it the same way) a powerful energy source that could be used as a superweaponis introduced well before the ending of the book. It’s also something the main characters (Belbo, Casaubon, and Diotallevi) just made up for fun. They become so engrossed in their own mock conspiracy theory game that they start to believe it, but it is clear that it was their own invention all along. That is, it’s clear to the reader. It’s not so clear to other characters in the book, serious conspiracy theorists who hear about this game but think it’s real. Belbo claims that he has the key to finding the Holy Grail, but refuses to share it with the conspiracy theorists. He’s just taunting them, though. The secret is that there is no secret. There was never a mystical power source. Depending on how you look at it, the climax of the book is either Belbo’s murder by the serious conspiracy theorists. He is killed when he refuses to give up the map to the Holy Grail. The narrator, Casaubon, witnesses this but escapes…for the time being. The book closes with Casaubon certain that he will eventually be found and killed as well. or The realization that the narrator, Casaubon, has succumbed to paranoid delusions. These delusions may have been brought on by the mock conspiracy game, or they may actually have driven the game. Either way, Casaubon’s account of Belbo’s fate and the activities of the serious conspiracy theorists are thus unreliable, and the reader is left uncertain as to how much of Casaubon’s story can be believed. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2009, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/64 "2009-03-13T22:52:32Z")
Susan Cooper’s _The Dark is Rising_ series. The bothersome ending didn’t stop me from enjoying it, but everyone (except Will) forgets what happens? Seriously? Bran forgets who is really is? That’s bullshit! ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2009, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/65 "2009-03-13T23:06:46Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I don’t think you’re remembering the book correctly, because what you describe is not the ending. > > The notion that the Holy Grail is really (I don’t think this even needs to be spoiler boxed, but since you did it I’ll keep it the same way) > > a powerful energy source that could be used as a superweaponis introduced well before the ending of the book. It’s also something the main characters (Belbo, Casaubon, and Diotallevi) just made up for fun. They become so engrossed in their own mock conspiracy theory game that they start to believe it, but it is clear that it was their own invention all along. > > That is, it’s clear to the reader. It’s not so clear to other characters in the book, serious conspiracy theorists who hear about this game but think it’s real. Belbo claims that he has the key to finding the Holy Grail, but refuses to share it with the conspiracy theorists. He’s just taunting them, though. The secret is that there is no secret. There was never a mystical power source. > Depending on how you look at it, the climax of the book is either > > Belbo’s murder by the serious conspiracy theorists. He is killed when he refuses to give up the map to the Holy Grail. The narrator, Casaubon, witnesses this but escapes…for the time being. The book closes with Casaubon certain that he will eventually be found and killed as well. > > or > > The realization that the narrator, Casaubon, has succumbed to paranoid delusions. These delusions may have been brought on by the mock conspiracy game, or they may actually have driven the game. Either way, Casaubon’s account of Belbo’s fate and the activities of the serious conspiracy theorists are thus unreliable, and the reader is left uncertain as to how much of Casaubon’s story can be believed. I concur. And I am glad that I am not insane or losing my memory completely after all. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/66 "2009-03-14T03:35:20Z")
> [@Just\_Some\_Guy](#): > > Yes, I get to be the first to say: > > **Everything every written by Neil Stephenson.** I’ve never read any Stevenson, but Anne Tyler (Accidental Tourist) suffers from the same problem. Her books are filled with charming, funny characters, and the writing is likewise charming and funny… but of the five or six I’ve read, only one wrapped up well. In a couple of them, the ending was that the lead character made a choice between two romance possibilities. The lead character had agonized for half a book, and then at the end the author just seemed to flip a coin and say, “And he finally went with that woman instead of the other one.” ---
**Author:** ![shy\_guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a6a055/32.png) [@shy\_guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shy_guy)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/67 "2009-03-14T15:50:45Z")
I recently finished up the _Twilight_ series with its final installment, _Breaking Dawn_. Hoh boy. [spoiler]To begin with, the first three books in the series lead you to believe (and by that I mean “state explicitly”) that vampires who have special powers like Edward, Alice, and Jasper are rare. Edward’s mind-reading and Alice’s premonitions are supposed to be a Big Deal, and only the Volturi surround themselves with as great a variety of super-powered vampires. Until _Breaking Dawn_, when you find out that vampires are pretty much the Legion of Super-Heroes and they all have some sort of extra ability and those who don’t, like Carlisle and Esme, are apparently in the minority. Fine, whatever. So they spend a big chunk of the novel gathering together the vampire X-Men to fight the Volturi. Okay, cool. The books are all abysmal, so at the very least the series is going to end with a big goofy battle and some character deaths. Nope. At the end of the book it’s just oh, well, nevermind, and all of the characters just sort of go their separate ways and live happily ever after. Gah! If whoever writes the script to the _Breaking Dawn_ movie has any sense whatsoever, he’ll change the ending entirely.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/68 "2009-03-14T15:57:24Z")
Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years. Adrian inherits house. Adrian moves into house with his two sons. Adrian hires tutor for older son who turns out to be a psychotic who burns the house dow. The End Teenage angst is funny. Grown up angst is ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/69 "2009-03-14T21:42:02Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > _What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?_. So all six children are sitting up at dawn, outside the house, the all their possessions scattered on the lawn, while watching their house burn up. Their house with their mother’s corpse in it burn up. Their house with their mother’s corpse in it that they deliberately set on fire burn up. So what happens after that? According to the movie, they go on an RV adventure 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/70 "2009-03-14T22:08:51Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#): > > Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years. > > [snipped spoiler for ending] > > Teenage angst is funny. Grown up angst is ridiculous. I reached the same conclusion upon reading _Adrian Mole: The Wildnerness Years_ and so never read _Cappuccino Years_ or the later _Weapons of Mass Destruction_. Adrian as a teen was hilarious and fairly believable, but as an adult not so much. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/71 "2009-03-14T22:32:53Z")
David Wingrove’s _Chung Kuo_ series. The books take place in the future, where the Chinese have taken over the world, and these 7 Chinese noble families rule the world, pretty much one to the continent. It’s an 8 book series. The books are, for the most part, geopolitical thrillers…there’s this international terrorist group trying to overthrow the reactionary governments, and meanwhile, the seven governments conspire against each other, and so on. And gradually, things just start falling apart. It’s epic, even the best characters are flawed and the worst have some sympathetic traits, it’s fast paced, and even though some people have accused it of being anti-Chinese, I didn’t think so. Then the 8th book came out. In book eight, as a book review I like, puts it[spoiler] > [@](#): > > The first seven volumes of Chung Kuo demonstrated the ease with which humanity embraces oppressive systems, bureaucracies and traditions that constantly validate the already wealthy and powerful, while forever stripping away everyone else’s dignity. The author showed quite explicitly how, time and again, humanity is responsible for its own sorry condition, how it forever lets its pettiness and shortsightedness deaden its potential to create a compassionate world. In The Marriage of the Living Dark, it is revealed that Howard DeVore is actually not a human being at all but an ancient gigantic multidimensional alien space spider responsible for most of humanity’s ills and that without his interference humanity would long ago have achieved utopia. We also find out that all this took place in an alternate universe, and the book gets even stranger than that.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2009, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/72 "2009-03-14T23:39:36Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > David Wingrove’s _Chung Kuo_ series. The books take place in the future, where the Chinese have taken over the world, and these 7 Chinese noble families rule the world, pretty much one to the continent. It’s an 8 book series. The books are, for the most part, geopolitical thrillers…there’s this international terrorist group trying to overthrow the reactionary governments, and meanwhile, the seven governments conspire against each other, and so on. And gradually, things just start falling apart. It’s epic, even the best characters are flawed and the worst have some sympathetic traits, it’s fast paced, and even though some people have accused it of being anti-Chinese, I didn’t think so. > > Then the 8th book came out. In book eight, as a book review I like, puts it[spoiler] > > We also find out that all this took place in an alternate universe, and the book gets even stranger than that.[/spoiler] :eek::eek::eek: I read the first two a few years ago and thought I might want to get around to reading the rest sometime. (Though the writing in the second seemed really inferior to the first so I was afraid it wasn’t going to be as good.) But… what that reviewer said… is that _true_?! :eek: If so, then thanks for the warning! Holy crap thats a weird way to end the series. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/73 "2009-03-15T01:06:29Z")
_Stuart Little_ by E. B. White. It has other problems, but the ending is just White giving up and saying that Stuart goes on to other adventures. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/74 "2009-03-15T02:19:25Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > But… what that reviewer said… is that _true_?! :eek: > > If so, then thanks for the warning! Holy crap thats a weird way to end the series. Well, look at it this way. You still have four or five books to enjoy before you have to face book 8. (I didn’t really like book 7, but it’s readable. It’s no book 8.) ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/75 "2009-03-15T02:33:16Z")
> [@Smokinjbc](#): > > For the most part I’d agree, although I love Stephen King. But I will say that I thought _The Shining_ and _Misery_ had good endings, if not great. And although a novella- _Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption_ was just about perfect in every way, including the ending. They blew it in the movie, though. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/76 "2009-03-15T02:44:59Z")
Stig of the Dump. ☹ A recent kids’ book by an author that my daughter, along with thousands (millions?) of other little girls adore, was about a 14-year-old having an affair with an adult teacher - called ‘Love Lessons,’ one of Jacqueline Wilson’s many light-hearted teenage girl books. Now, the affair never goes anywhere for a long time, but the teacher admits that he fancies the child, they do kiss, and the girl gets chucked out of school - to be sent to a much better one. The man goes unpunished. His wife is portrayed as pathetic. The book ends with the child still fantasising that maybe one day she and her teacher will be together. Er, hello? Why not show her growing up a bit and realising how creepy this man was? If you want realism, that is what would really happen. Instead someone who has a pretty bloody big influence on teenage girls (she’s even the children’s laureate) wrote a story that basically endorses teacher-student relationships. What next? ‘Yes, Daddy, Yes!’? > [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > Are you saying that you don’t know what the ending is, or you don’t know why I would be infuriated by > > [spoiler]the notion of Clairice Starling–the well-developed, three-dimensional, sympathetic protagonist of Silence of the Lambs, not merely losing to Hannibal Lecter, not merely being raped by him, but being brainwashed to such an extent that she both joins him in his cannibalism and likes it? > > Hard to imagine why THAT would be vexsome to someone who likes Clarice. :rolleyes:[/spoiler] Seconded. The whole book was a nauseating ‘portrait of the serial killer as a young man. Look at him kill lots of people! But he saw someone eat someone when he was a kid! Sympathise with him! He’s a victim of his own psychology!’ piece of shit, but I continued hoping that it would end with something along the lines of ‘nuh uh, people being shit to you doesn’t give you an excuse to keep killing people just because you don’t like them. You need to be in an asylum.’ But no. It ended with a great, powerful female character being a trophy wife to a cannibal. It made me feel dirty. Like Thomas Harris had just wanked over me in the guise of writing a novel. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/77 "2009-03-15T03:12:20Z")
All the more reason for me never to read that book. Thanks for the warning! ---
**Author:** ![iftheresaway](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecae2f/32.png) [@iftheresaway](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iftheresaway)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/78 "2009-03-15T03:23:56Z")
> [@shy\_guy](#): > > I recently finished up the _Twilight_ series with its final installment, _Breaking Dawn_. > > Hoh boy. > > [spoiler]To begin with, the first three books in the series lead you to believe (and by that I mean “state explicitly”) that vampires who have special powers like Edward, Alice, and Jasper are rare. Edward’s mind-reading and Alice’s premonitions are supposed to be a Big Deal, and only the Volturi surround themselves with as great a variety of super-powered vampires. > > Until _Breaking Dawn_, when you find out that vampires are pretty much the Legion of Super-Heroes and they all have some sort of extra ability and those who don’t, like Carlisle and Esme, are apparently in the minority. > > Fine, whatever. > > So they spend a big chunk of the novel gathering together the vampire X-Men to fight the Volturi. Okay, cool. The books are all abysmal, so at the very least the series is going to end with a big goofy battle and some character deaths. > > Nope. > > At the end of the book it’s just oh, well, nevermind, and all of the characters just sort of go their separate ways and live happily ever after. > > Gah! > > If whoever writes the script to the _Breaking Dawn_ movie has any sense whatsoever, he’ll change the ending entirely.[/spoiler] I actually have to totally disagree with this. i don’t want to argue that it has some big, cosmic, literary point (even as a literature major, I realize that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar), but I like that it wasn’t just another _yawn_ FINAL SHOWDOWN ULTIMATE BATTLE AGAINST GOOD AND EVIL like every other multiple-book series seems to be lately. In fact, that whole book was very much not where I expected the series to go, and was pretty much the catalyst for my love for the series. I like how in the end, good only sort of triumphs over evil, and it is an uncomfortable truce at best, but nonetheless the protagonists go home to enjoy their family and get on with their (non)life as best as they can anyway. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/79 "2009-03-15T03:38:04Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > According to the movie, they go on an RV adventure 🙂 There was a short voiceover at the end of the movie explaining what happened to the sisters - got jobs, or boyfriends, whatever. But the return of the adorable silver camper caravan was totally wrecked because of the simultaneous return of the HIDEOUS Juliette Lewis! :eek: - Talk about disappointing endings! ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2009, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137/80 "2009-03-15T11:46:28Z")
> [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](#): > > \ > > Another was Simon Green’s _Shadow Falls_. I give Simon Green a lot of latitude with his books, because he’s good with some things (atmosphere, memorable characters) and not so good with others, such as writing coherent plots. So I read his books more for the journey than the destination. I understand that there’s going to be a lot of bad with the good, and so I put up with it. > > So _Shadows Fall_ starts out as one of his better efforts- that is, the characters and setting are fun to read about, even if the story meanders too much- and then he goes and utterly [ruins everything](http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/bn/board/message?board.id=vpttn&thread.id=11295&jump=true) to point where even I can’t excuse his mess. The link you gave complains about _deus ex machina_ - I think I would make that complaint about almost every Simon Green has written. He creates great characters, but just when you think you’ve met one that is the biggest baddest character who can be, he introduces another. I still read him, but I view him as, _at best_, mind candy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-with-disappointing-endings-spoilers-obviously/489137.md?page=3)