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| Here's to you Kat! And Thank you. |
First of all, no, I’m not Sia. Sia has kindly allowed me
to hijack borrow her blog while she takes a well-deserved rest and
enjoys the long weekend. With any luck, she’s sitting by a pool with an iced
coffee (or other adult beverage!).
Today’s blog topic was prompted by reviews I read on a
book I loved, by people kvetching remarking they were unhappy with what
they viewed as an unresolved, ambiguous ending. To them, I want to say pffft
have you never watched Gone With the Wind? Shane? Read pretty much any literary
novels?
I remember seeing Gone With the Wind for the first time
when I was 15, as part of a class assignment. Rhett delivers his lovely line
and slams the door. Scarlett cries and says she’ll think about things tomorrow.
Fade to black. Lights up. I remember standing and yelling “I sat through four
hours of boring war scenes and two intermissions for this??? This non-ending??
This…this…” At that point I became pretty much incoherent.
Many years later I watched it again. And discovered that
I loved the ending. I loved discussing and debating it with friends. Did
Scarlett chase after Rhett? Chase after someone else? Learn her lesson and
become a nicer person (pffft!) Margaret Mitchell didn’t spell it out for us
because she trusted us, as readers, to be discerning enough to figure it out
ourselves. She didn’t need to wrap a pretty bow around it and deliver it on a
silver platter. When asked, Mitchell herself said she did not know and said, "For all I know, Rhett may have
found someone else who was less difficult."
The movie
Shane ends much the same. The hero kills the villain and saves the town, but is
wounded in the process. He gets on his horse and rides away into the sunset.
Does he die? Find a doctor? Go on to save some other town? Marry Miss Kitty
(oops, wrong Western). The thing is, we don’t need to know. The ending is
satisfying just as it is, and the discussion/debate around it is even more
entertaining.
So long as an
author ties up all the major plot points, vanquishes evil (at least
temporarily), and has cemented a memorable protagonist in my mind, I’m
satisfied. Does the hero live to fight another day? Does the heroine look
toward the future—no matter what it may hold—as a changed (or not!) person? I’m
good with that.
I look at
ambiguous/open/temporarily resolved endings this way: Let’s say on Christmas
morning, you are given two presents. The first is all tied up with silvery
wrapping paper and tied up with a pretty bow. Inside you find a doll house—the
walls are decorated, it’s filled with tiny furniture, and comes with a little
doll family all ready to move in.
The other
package isn’t nearly as pretty—it’s kind of lumpy and unwieldy and has sharp
corners poking out. When you unwrap it, you discover a pile of Legos. OK, so
you can make your own doll house with them. Or you could build a skyscraper. Or
a rocket. Or a pirate ship. They can be just as entertaining as that pretty
ready-to-go gift, but some assembly is required. You’ll need to think. You’ll
need to use your imagination.
But Legos—that
daunting pile-o-stuff—comes with the best thing of all: possibilities. They can
become whatever you want.
And so it is
with books that have those open, ambiguous endings. When I read books like that
I thank the author for respecting my intelligence, for trusting that I will
discern their meaning, and for gifting me with whatever possible ending I can
imagine for the characters.
***SPOILER ALERT***
If you’re up
for a “flying off into the sunset” kind of ending, one that manages to combine
BOTH a wounded hero AND a woman trying to figure out the next step in her life,
I highly recommend the newest thriller from Lisa
Brackmann, Getaway. Lisa herself will be here to talk with you on
Wednesday, but I love her work so much, I wanted to recommend it ahead of time!
- So tell me: do you like your endings wrapped up with a pretty bow, or do you walk on the wild side and play with Legos?
Kat Sheridan is a recovering project manager and business
analyst whose hard-bitten persona has always hidden a secret romantic. She
likes her stories with a dark and dangerous flavor, so long as—in the end—the
villains are vanquished and true love triumphs. She is inordinately fond of
glitter nail polish, shiny things, bourbon, and any comestibles on which
frosting can be placed.
Kat splits her time these days between the
Midwest in the summer and the South in the winter because she dislikes snow,
driving on ice, and wearing shoes (except for flip-flops, preferably with
rhinestones). Her peripatetic life is shared with her own real life hero who
shows her every day what happily ever after means.
