No Happy Endings

I write...not noir, exactly.

But the world I live in has few happy endings--my parents both ended life with more tragedy than satisfaction, one to a plane crash and the other to the devastating consequences of a lifetime of poorly controlled diabetes. Poverty, madness, disease pepper my family tree like confetti at a Mardi Gras parade.

But that's true of most family trees.

I don't look for happy endings, but I do chase satisfying ones in books. Lear satisfies me as much as Much Ado About Nothing.  Not even sure I need a clear resolution--but an answer to the dramatic question raised by the book. In a Mosley book, I'm not expecting postwar America to suddenly turn color blind. But I am hoping against hope that Easy Rawlins gets to keep some of his dignity and self-determination by the book's end. 

What do you look for? Have you ever read a crime novel that killed the protagonist, and yet you were satisfied? How did you feel at the end of The Lovely Bones? The movie Betty Blue? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Can you ever forgive an author for leaving her main character's world in tatters?

 

Comments

[Ann]

Hello Mysti!
Like you, I look for a satisfying ending. One that flows naturally out of the story. Nothing worse than a "happy ending" tacked on to a story that doesn't lead to it, i.e., The Hollywood Ending. Of course, sometimes life is arbitrary that way, so maybe a Hollywood ending that leaves me saying, "WhaaaAAAT?" is more "real" than otherwise.
Hmmm. I'll have to think about that...

[Michael A. Black]

Hi Mysit. I couldn't make it through The Lovely Bones, nor did I see Betty Blue. And I wished I'd avoided the Cuckoo's Nest entirely. Suffice it to say, I never read another one of Kesey's books.

[Mysti]

Mike--no worries. I had some issues with The Lovely Bones.

I once waited two hours for Ken Kesey to show up at an event. He had issues ;)