Apr 12, 2013
Jessica Soffer's Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots is a novel about families, food, and facing uncomfortable truths. It also culminates in a revealing and satisfying ending that brings all its pages together. For Tip Sheet, Soffer shared 10 of her favorite endings in books.
1. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace - In an interview with the Boston Phoenix, Wallace said, “Plot wise, the book doesn’t come to a resolution. But if the readers perceive it as me giving them the finger, then I haven’t done my job. On the surface it might seem like it just stops. But it’s supposed to stop and then kind of hum and project. Musically and emotionally, it’s a pitch that seemed right.”
2. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro - Stevens, our narrator, is going out on a limb, pursuing love after a life of anything but. We’re rooting for him, for love, holding our breath, wishing. In the end, Stevens makes a choice and it might be a letdown. And yet, it’s exactly appropriate. He acts according to the lines in which he was drawn. Fiction, at its best, brings us so close, brings us to our knees, and then reminds us, however abruptly, perhaps disappointingly, of the difference between us and them. We are not Stevens. Stevens is Stevens. And we are better for knowing him: why he didn’t, couldn’t, and why we might have but won’t.
3. Atonement by Ian McEwan - All’s fair in love and postscripts and novel writing about novel writing. Or isn’t it? The jury is still out. McEwan’s novelist narrator gives us a version of things, and then takes that version away when she reveals having imagined the series of events she’s just put forth as true. “WTF,” you might say. Or else, “Really? She (the narrator) can do that? He (McEwan) can do that?” Did it. Done. So whether you feel duped or vindictive or gullible or disappointed, it is certain that McEwan’s ending will make you reconsider the novel’s first 300 pages, how you read them, how you maybe should have, how you trusted the narrator, and how you trust the people you trust. You won’t fall so easily next time, or maybe—in McEwan’s hands—you will.
I don’t like to play favorites. It’s not right. Sometimes, it’s an act in futility. Apples and oranges and such, especially in literature. But here we are. Ten Best Book Endings, according to me, a woman who has read as much as she possibly could during her twenty-seven years and who wishes every day for more reading time so that she could say “Ten Best,” and feel more certain. Until then, “best” is a moving target—and I’m not even in possession of all the darts.
Bottom line: the most we can look for is an end that justifies, honors, makes meaningful the means. And sometimes we might hope for an end that does more: an end that outdoes the means. Sometimes, a deftly plotted twist will do the trick, or a really grand grand finale, or a thought so moving, so appropriate that we write it down and keep it in our wallets for years. When endings work they feel both inevitable and earned, which just doesn’t happen in real life where nothing is ever still long enough to really end at all. And so good endings must do more than life: honoring what’s come before, swelling with the promise of what’s to come, and hovering in exactly the right place so that when it’s over, it’s hardly over. It’s just right.
If you’re looking for a satisfying ending, a comprehensible ending, even a startlingly beautiful ending, look elsewhere. But if you’re looking for the kind of ending that will make you throw the book across the room and start all over again on page one because you know that something important just happened and you’ll be damned if you’re not going to be able to articulate what, read Infinite Jest. This end justifies not only the means, but Round Deux, if you’re up for it.
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