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.
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.
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.
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!
I concur. And I am glad that I am not insane or losing my memory completely after all.
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.”
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]
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.
According to the movie, they go on an RV adventure 
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.
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.
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.
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.)
They blew it in the movie, though.
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!’?
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.
All the more reason for me never to read that book. Thanks for the warning!
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.
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!
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.