Best Ending to a Novel!

Imran Siddiqui · June 20, 2003, 21:21

I just finished reading Foundation and Empire by Issac Asimov and it had the most shocking and best ending I've read (of course someone will pop up saying he knew it midway through the book

).

Spoiler:

Lonestar · June 20, 2003, 21:52

Well, judging from the OoP I picked up today at the Exchange...

Quote:

Holy Sh*T! Voldemort is Harry and Ron's Dad?

JohnT · June 20, 2003, 23:48

Uh, Lone?

[ spoiler ] [ /spoiler ]

Spoiler:

Imran Siddiqui · June 20, 2003, 23:49

No comments on mine, John?

Lonestar · June 20, 2003, 23:53

Quote:

Originally posted by JohnT
Uh, Lone?

[ spoiler ] [ /spoiler ]

Spoiler:

I wasn't being serious.

Agathon · June 20, 2003, 23:56

The final Harry Potter book - where he dies.

Or the end of "Heart of Darkness". I always liked that.

Imran Siddiqui · June 20, 2003, 23:58

Agathon, bad news for you, but I bet Harry won't die in the 7th book

.

Agathon · June 21, 2003, 00:01

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Agathon, bad news for you, but I bet Harry won't die in the 7th book

.

Shame.

JohnT · June 21, 2003, 00:04

The joy of a man who rediscovered something that he thought was lost to him forever...

Quote:

Half an hour later he was sitting in front of the blank screen, thinking he had to be a glutton for punishment. He had taken the aspirin instead of the drink, but that didn't change what was going to happen now; he was going to sit here for fifteen minutes or maybe half an hour, looking at nothing but a cursor flashing in darkness, then he was going to turn the machine off and have that drink.

Except...

Except he had seen something funny on the way home from lunch with Charlie, and it had given him an idea. Not a big one, just a small one. After all, it had only been a small incident. Just a kid pushing a shopping cart up 48th Street, that was all, but there had been a cage in the cart, and in it had been a rather large furry animal which Paul at first thought was a cat. A closer look had shown him a wide, white stripe up the cat's back.

"Sonny," he said, "is that a skunk?"

"Yeah," the kid said, and pushed the shopping cart along a little faster. You didn't stop for long conversations with people in the city, especially weird-looking guys with bgs the size of Samsonite two-suiters under their eyes who were lurching along on metal walking sticks. The kid turned the corner and was gone.

Paul went on, wanting to take a cab, but he was supposed to walk at least a mile every day and this was his mile and it hurt like hell and to take his mind off the mile he started wondering where that kid had come from, where the shopping cart had come from, and most of all where the skunk had come from.

He heard a noise behind him and turned from the blank screen to see Annie coming out of the kitchen dressed in jeans and a red flannel logger's shirt, the chainsaw in her hands.

He closed his eyes, opened them, saw the same old nothing and was suddenly angry. He turned back to the word processor and wrote fast, almost bludgeoning the keys:

The kid heard a sound in the back of the building and although the thought of rats crossed his mind, he turned the corner anyway -- it was too early to go home because school didn't let out for another hour and a half and he had gone truant at lunch
What he saw crouched back against the wall in a dusty shaft of sunlight was not a rat but a great big black cat with the bushiest tail he had ever seen.

He stopped, heart suddenly pounding.

Paulie, Can You?

This was a question which he did not dare answer. He bent over the keyboard again, and after a moment began to hit the keys... but more gently now.

It wasn't a cat. Eddie Desmond had lived in New York City all his life, but he had been to the Bronx Zoo, and Christ, there were picture-books, weren't there? He knew what that thing was, although he hadn't the slightest idea how such a thing could have gotten into this deserted East 105th Street tenement, but the long white stripe down its back was a dead give-away. It was a skunk.
Eddie started slowly toward it, feet gritting in the plaster dust.

He could. He could.

So, in gratitude and in terror, he did. The hole opened and Paul stared through at what was there, unaware that his fingers were picking up speed, unaware that his aching legs were in the same city but fifty blocks away, unaware that he was weeping as he wrote.

Boris Godunov · June 21, 2003, 00:20

Bah, I want something that packs an emotional wallop. The end of All Quiet on the Western Front hasn't been beat in that regard yet. It's not often a book reduces me to tears.

Imran Siddiqui · June 21, 2003, 00:24

Really? I didn't regard the ending of AQWF to be that suprising or packing that much of a wallop. ::shrug::

Boris Godunov · June 21, 2003, 00:28

That's probably because you're a heartless conservative, naturally.

JohnT · June 21, 2003, 00:28

Well, given that I figured it out halfway into the book, Imran, it wasn't that surprising of an ending.

Boris, imho the denouement to Misery was *perfect*. The final chapter perfectly captures the psyche of a man who went through a very harrowing experience and, even months later, is still shaken by the events of his life. I would've typed up the entire chapter, but damn, that would've been quite long.

Velociryx · June 21, 2003, 00:29

My own, of course!

-=Vel=-

chequita guevara · June 21, 2003, 00:30

I can see the rabbits!

Imran Siddiqui · June 21, 2003, 00:40

Quote:

That's probably because you're a heartless conservative, naturally.

No, because it seemed to be obvious... the story led up to it.

On the contrast I cried when I read what JK Rowling just recently did for a girl, who was a huge Harry Potter fan, that was dying of cancer (just died, IIRC

)

Imran Siddiqui · June 21, 2003, 00:41

Quote:

Well, given that I figured it out halfway into the book, Imran, it wasn't that surprising of an ending.

Damn you!

But wasn't halfway through the book not even 25 pages into the second story?

Boris Godunov · June 21, 2003, 00:44

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Quote:

That's probably because you're a heartless conservative, naturally.

No, because it seemed to be obvious... the story led up to it.

Not every novel is supposed to have a suprise or twist ending. You've been seeing too many Hollywood movies.

JohnT · June 21, 2003, 00:49

Quote:

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Quote:

Well, given that I figured it out halfway into the book, Imran, it wasn't that surprising of an ending.

Damn you!

But wasn't halfway through the book not even 25 pages into the second story?

Don't know. What I do know is that, somewhere in the middle, a little

went off and I went "Oh!"

Turned out I was right.

Imran Siddiqui · June 21, 2003, 00:49

Quote:

Not every novel is supposed to have a suprise or twist ending.

But if you can accurately gauge the ending, then it doesn't NEARLY pack the emotional punch... because there is no punch, you've seen it and deflected it.

JohnT · June 21, 2003, 00:51

It all depends upon how you write it, Imran.

Imran Siddiqui · June 21, 2003, 00:54

JohnT, true... I guess I didn't think Remarque was a great writer. Good book though

.

Master Zen · June 21, 2003, 00:58

The Moonstone had a very good and surprising ending (best detective novel I've read...)

Kassiopeia · June 21, 2003, 01:20

Quote:

Not every novel is supposed to have a suprise or twist ending. You've been seeing too many Hollywood movies.

Yeah, but when the punch just comes behind the corner and *wham* strikes you, and you realise that it's completely possible but you never thought about it, and it isn't a lame "it was all a dream" sort of deus ex machina either.... Like in Dan Simmons's Fall of Hyperion, though this isn't the ending:

Spoiler:

Guynemer · June 21, 2003, 08:56

He loved Big Brother.

Adagio · June 21, 2003, 09:03

Best ending to a Novel? Isn't all endings good? Because when you're finally at the end, you don't have to read more

(In case you didn't know: I hate books... the only books I've ever read, is those you're supposed to read in school)

Ecthy · June 21, 2003, 09:22

Not the end, but Mrs Roy is quite good in building the story peu à peu in the God of Small Things.

Every few pages you're shocked with a new detail, the end itself is a little weak, though, no revelation

JohnT · June 21, 2003, 09:40

Quote:

Originally posted by ADG
Best ending to a Novel? Isn't all endings good? Because when you're finally at the end, you don't have to read more

(In case you didn't know: I hate books... the only books I've ever read, is those you're supposed to read in school)

Did they ban the word "are" where you live?

Ecthy · June 21, 2003, 09:44

interesting question... maybe he just hasn't been reading enough in his youth, thus too small a vocabulary

JohnT · June 21, 2003, 09:46

Very likely. I'm also a little surprised that someone who doesn't like to read hangs around in message boards... one would think an AOL chat room would be more to his taste.