Home > The Book Page > Archives > 2007 > October > 03 > Entry
Today’s blog is shocking!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s been four months now. Remember the night you watched the series finale of “The Sopranos?” The family gathered in the diner, that Journey song playing on the jukebox, Meadow parking, the guy at the bar who eyeballs the family, then goes into the men’s room, then BLAMMO! Black screen. Millions of people all thought the same thing: My cable just went out and I missed the last seconds!
It was a controversial ending, but I liked it because it didn’t play along with any of the scenarios viewers had fantasized about; it was ambiguous and open to interpretation; it was just a flat-out shocker; it made people think and debate.
That’s how I felt when I finished Walter Mosley’s new novel, “Blonde Faith.” The 10th Easy Rawling mystery novel has an ending that will have people talking, I guarantee it. It’s just that in the book world, several million people don’t all finish a book at the same time, unless it’s Harry Potter, so the talk will be more diffused.
My review of “Blonde Faith” will be in Sunday’s newspaper. The book should hit book stores next week. But I’d like to hear from you on the topic of shock endings. Movies do it well (“The Sixth Sense,” “The Usual Suspects”); TV does it quirky (“Newhart”).
Books, not so much. There are the old O. Henry stories and “Incident at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, but those are more twists than shocks. Before it was an awesome movie with Edward Norton, “Primal Fear” was a thriller by Georgia’s own Bill Diehl with a great surprise ending. I’ve heard the recent novel “Double Bind” by Chris Bohjalian has a surprise ending, but haven’t read it yet. Agatha Christie’s “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” of course, but that’s so old it’s a cliche (the narrator did it).
“Blonde Faith’s” ending is of a different sort than O. Henry, but I can’t say any more without spoiling it. Can anyone think of a novel that has an ending that just knocked you back on your heels? Spoiler-wise, I’m gonna draw an arbitrary line: If it was published 2000 or later, don’t give away the ending. Earlier than 2000, you can give it away.
(Quick FYI: The Margaret Mitchell House event with Lorna Landvik, scheduled for Thursday night, has been canceled.
Comments
Commenting is now closed for this entry.
By Jeff
October 3, 2007 9:03 AM | Link to this
Books that have a shocking ending:
Dance of Death, Preston/ Child. Without giving the ending away, let’s just say that this is the middle book of the Diogenes Trilogy and without this ending, Book of the Dead can’t happen.
T2: Rising Storm S.M. Stirling. This trilogy ignores T3 and starts at the end of T2. Infiltrator, the first of the trilogy, says that Cyberdyne had a backup facility on a secure military base that the Connors didn’t know about. Meanwhile, in the future, Skynet has perfected cyborg technology and has created the perfect human/computer merge. Along the way, it worked with gene splicing to give its human/computer super human capabilities OTHER than the computer component of its brain. (This computer component of the brain is in fact the only “machine” part of this creature.) Skynet calls its creation the “Infiltrator” and makes both male and female models. The female models come with the ability to clone themselves. Skynet sends one of the female models back to stop the Connors and ensure Skynet’s creation.
Anyways, in Rising Storm, the Infiltrator succeeds in gaining access to the early stages of the Skynet project. John tries to stop it, and in the process probably the single most shocking thing I have ever seen in novel form happens.
By margaret
October 4, 2007 8:42 AM | Link to this
The ending of Cold Mountain was one that made me tense… I doubt it was a shock ending, but I felt like the book set me up for one ending and delivered another. In fact, now that I think of it, I don’t know that Frasier made enough use of it… it’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I don’t think he showed so much of the aftermath. He did do a “trick” ending in that the last bit was a look into the future of the characters and while I was glad to see that snippet, I’m not so sure it served the main story.
I really love the way he wrote Cold Mountain though… I think his twists and plot shockers were cinematically inspired and his main narrative was so old-fashioned… he really forced you to read slowly, to pause in the reading… and then he’d throw in a big ole twist.
By BPJ
October 4, 2007 10:28 AM | Link to this
One classic with a surprise ending is Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men” - not a last-page, or even last-chapter surprise (I believe it is in the next-to-last chapter), but a surprise nonetheless. Yet there were clues earlier in the book, and the surprise explains a lot, so it’s not an ending that cheats the reader.
A recent first-rate novel with a surprise toward the end is Ian McEwan’s “Atonement.” In the final short chapter - an epilogue which comes decades after the action in the rest of the novel - we learn that the narrator is not who we assumed it was. Since this book came out after 2000, I won’t say more.
One creative and unexpected ending (which predates the Sopranos sudden stop by more than 3 decades) is David Lodge’s “Changing Places.” It’s a comic novel about two academics, one American, one English, who trade campuses for a while. The ending includes an intelligent meditation on the differing ways in which novels and films end, including the fact that we can feel in our hands that the pages of the book are running out, while a film can often surprise us not only by HOW it ends but by WHEN it ends.
By Jeff
October 4, 2007 10:40 AM | Link to this
Thinking about it, Sparks’ A Bend in the Road has the same feature as Atonement: The narrator is not who we had assumed, and we find out in the epilogue.
Similarly, since it was published in 2001, I shall not reveal who. What I CAN reveal (since it is known throughout most of the book) is that the person responsible for the male lead’s anguish is the narrator. Who exactly that person is is the surprise.
By Kate
October 4, 2007 8:20 PM | Link to this
Oh, for the love of Zeus, please do not place McEwan and Sparks in the same literary category. It’s not good for my blood pressure.
As for shocking endings (but not a gasping, clutching my chest shock), I was surprised by the ending of Snow Falling on Cedars. The murder mystery that wasn’t.
I have not read Mosely yet, but would like to. What is a good book to start with?
By Jeff
October 5, 2007 8:16 AM | Link to this
Kate:
Like it or not, 300 years from now a person seeking to gain insight into life in 2007 won’t go out and read McEwan or even Cormac McCarthy (author of our “book of the month” The Road)
Instead, this person will gain FAR more insight into our minds by reading Sparks, Child, Brown (either, though obviously I prefer Dale), Preston/Child, Feldhahn, Henderson, and the like. In other words, while the elite may prefer the “literature” of McEwan and McCarthy, us “normal” people and our ideas and lives are better represented in so-called “pop” fiction.
Heck, the things we now consider “literature” were originally the “pop” fiction of their day. (I’m talking specifically of Dickens, Shakespeare, and Holmes here - particularly Dickens.)