Your really annoying ending to a book?!

[Liltzero]

I've just finished reading a book where the plot was a woman investigating the death of her sister, a death which the police thought was suicide, but she thought murder. The ending was maddening! The reader was left not knowing whether our chief character was murdered by the same man who killed her sister or was she rescued in the nick of the time?!

What books have you read with a frustrating or wrong conclusion or non-conclusion?

It wasn't a "then I woke up" ending though. He tells the story as if he was aboard with animals but was aboard with other humans. His trauma basically makes them animals as its "safer".

I immediately thought of Small Pleasures and One Day, I can see I wasn’t the first 😂

I actually loved both books up until the endings which both seemed so unfair.

I suppose at least I will always remember them, maybe this is what the authors wanted.

Yes!
I normally love Kate Atkinson but that ending made me feel that I'd read the whole book for nothing.

I didn't watch the film when it came out because the reviews were so bad but if it's got the ending that the book should have had, then maybe I should give it a try.

I always assumed it was a form of legal disclaimer because Sue T was writing about living, identifiable people.

Then, presumably as the sky didn't fall in after The Queen and I, Sue was less cautious with Queen Camilla.

Interesting that at the time of publication, the idea of a Queen Camilla was unlikely enough to make a compelling, comic book title - and here we are, 17 years later, about to see Queen Camilla being crowned.

Anyway, I kind of discount the ending of The Queen and I - other than that, it's a great book and eerily prescient in some ways.

So many people have said Small Pleasures that I googled it and recognised the cover.
I bought it after it was mentioned on Between the Covers but still haven't got round to reading it.
Not sure whether to bother now.

The man in the high castle, it just ends. So many lose ends

I thought it was a beautiful book, and that the ending was the point of it all - like the bit in Brief Encounter where she can't have her final farewell lunch with the chap, because the chatty woman turns up and ruins it. Someone was going to have their heart broken, why shouldn't it be the main character? She only gets to enjoy the small pleasures, not the big ones.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett.
I loved the whole book, the ending was so sad.... And then the epilogue. Why?

Though I re-read it recently and had forgotten about the epilogue so it didn't scar me that badly 😁

I just pretend the last few pages of Small Pleasures don’t exist.

I do that with the last volume of the Cazalet Chronicles Chessie.
i agree about Small Pleasures and even more so A God in Ruins. The latter was infuriating.

Although your take on SP is interesting Howard. I’d forgotten about the end of Brief Encounter - one of my mum’s favourite films. We watched it many times along with A Matter of Life and Death, Mrs Miniver and others of that era. Only two channels in the olden days meant you watched what your mum watched on a wet Sunday afternoon.

Absolutely agree about Small Pleasures. Such a cruel and unnecessary ending.

One Day, oh my good fuck, yes. So awful I immediately gave it away for someone else to hate. It usually takes me years before I finally conclude I'm not going to re-read something, and get it off the shelves.

The horse whisperer, i actually threw the book across the room.
the film ending was much more realistic

So true re the film choice!

The ending of I Want My Hat Back is a bit of a downer.

I presume you are talking about "My Sister's Keeper"?

I remember reading that there was fierce pre-release competition to buy the film rights for David Baldacci's first book "Absolute Power". Clint Eastwood ultimately bought it, in spite of his advisors suggesting he didn't because the character he would play dies early in the book. The response, well, we won't kill him off. Changed the dynamics just a little.

Completely agree, I just read this and absolutely hated the ending and the general resolution of the overarching plot, very disappointed.

Where the Crawdads Sing, the ending goes against every single character trait that’s been set up and everything about the place too, it was ridiculous and forced and I have no idea why people rave about it, I read it years ago and it still irritates me.

Was about to write this! There was no need to end it like that, it added nothing.

Oh I really liked the ending! It seemed to fit his character more, the way he actually died.

I'm about two thirds of the way through Small Pleasures. Started it a few months ago, but it hasn't really held my attention, obviously! Wondering whether to bother finishing now 🤔

Jodi Picoult's The book of two ways had me vexed by the ending. I was emotionally engaged by the story and wistful about my own romantic path. Did not wrap up conclusively for me. Irked me that I'd spent so long bloody reading it. Reading on here about another of her books has properly put me off her now..

Yes to Behind Her Eyes. I was so enraged by it I wrote a scathing review on Goodreads which still gets likes to this day, so clearly not alone in my hatred of it.

That's not what happens though.

Spoilers for Life of Pi follow...

There is Pi's version of events and then there is what really happened. The animals weren't animals, they were other humans rescued from the boat and they acted as animals would to survive.

The orang-utan was Pi's mother who protected him from the hyena who was the cook who ate the poor zebra cabin boy alive. Pi survived because he found a tiger in the boat. Pi was the tiger and finally the tiger ran away as he was no longer needed to survive when his boat landed on a beach among civilisation again.

Pi told both versions to the police and the policemen chose to accept the story of the tiger, hyena, orang-utan and zebra rather than acknowledge what actually happened among shipwrecked humans.

Still not quite got my head around the island that absorbs people though. Anyone understand that part?