The experience of belatedly coming up with a rejoinder to a cutting remark is a frustrating one (see: “jerk store”), but isn’t it maybe also better than if a withering comeback actually had been delivered in a timely manner? In thinking about the endings of things lately, I’ve become less and less inclined toward anything that feels too emphatic, too scripted, too final. I’m as guilty as anyone of overusing exclamation points (maybe guiltier!) and reworking a final sentence until it becomes the perfect kicker, and yet I’ve become allergic to anything neatly tied into a bow, and have become more and more inclined toward those things that end by trailing off, or in a question (either explicit or implicit), or maybe don’t even end at all?
Now, at the very end of the year (or maybe you’re reading this at the beginning of the year; the present is nothing if not slippery), is as good a time as any to reflect on the porosity of a beautiful conclusion, on the way in which it is both distinctive and open-ended, satisfying and uncomfortable. Below, a handful of books that conclude in just such a way, offering an opportunity to rethink what an ending is or has to be, and maybe even encourage you to start all over again — if not with this specific story, then another of your choosing.
After Claude, Iris Owens (available here)
Both a breakup and a breakdown novel (one of the best of this noteworthy genre, if you ask me), After Claude is narrated by the incomparable Harriet, who has just, she informs readers right away, “left Claude, the French rat.” On a sentence by sentence level, never has a book been so acid-laced and so it’s maybe no wonder that Harriet’s world corrodes around her, until she is forced to retreat with little more than her Marlboros to the Chelsea Hotel, which is where things end for her, at least in terms of this book, as she lays down, with “no thoughts, only a dim awareness of myself listening and waiting.”
New People, Danzy Senna (available here)
This devastating, razor-sharp book is the opposite of a “feel good read” (thank god), challenging conventional thoughts on race, romance, and family in a subtly relentless way that manages to feel cleansing, even if purification is never meant to be the goal (or even a possibility). It’s the late 1990s, Maria is in her late 20s, engaged to Khalil, finishing her dissertation on the Jonestown massacre, and ready — even actively seeking — to blow up her life; anything to get out from under the oppressive ambivalence she’s feeling about her own future. What Senna captures so powerfully here is the way in which freedom can never be an end unto itself, it’s the choice and the struggle to work toward freedom that is actually worth something. Or maybe everything.
Intimacies, Katie Kitamura (available here)
If you ever want to question the possibility of there being any such thing as a “neat ending,” get involved with someone who is only kind of out of a long-term relationship. This anyway, is the situation that the narrator of Intimacies, is in, as she dates a man who is separated from his wife, but actually still quite firmly attached. While this element of the book might be vaguely relatable to some, other aspects of the narrator’s life are decidedly not: She’s an interpreter at the International Court in The Hague, and is working on the trial of a man accused of war crimes. Kitamura refuses to balk at the thorniest of moral issues — whether personal, political, or both — and deftly works at untangling the complex emotions that arise during troubled times, without ever trying to solve anything. Nothing gets figured out within these pages; there is nothing presented that can be solved. But, that doesn’t mean there might not be a way forward; in this case, the ending is as open as a single word: “yes.”
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin (available here)
If you’re an adult who does crosswords or cryptics or word puzzles of any kind, please read (or re-read) this book that has managed to thoroughly delight me every time I’ve picked it up (the first time being, I think, when I was about 8). It’s a mystery with the highest of stakes: a great fortune! But the intrigue extends beyond claims to a massive inheritance and into other lurid areas, like real estate and matrimony and explosives. There are fake-outs and cover-ups and the final chapter is titled “The End?” But despite ending on a literal question (“Ready for a game of chess?”), The Westing Game manages to be both fully gratifying in the answers it provides, while not pretending that facts are necessary to arrive at an emotional truth. It’s a cunning, quick read — an important reminder that answers can be found everywhere, not just at the ends of things.
But also…
Potent endings aren’t just for books, of course; one of the reasons I’ve been thinking about endings lately was a conversation I had about Paul Simon’s “Congratulations,” which is the final song on his eponymous 1972 album, and which has a more-than-minute-long instrumental outro that it’s hard not to listen to over and over. The song’s lyrics are a plea of sorts, a prayer for the possibility of a good ending; the musical outro delivers on it, even if life (and love) can’t. (YouTube)
One of my favorite desserts is one of the most simple: prunes simmered for close to an hour in cinnamon-spiced red wine and then spooned over clouds of mascarpone. The inspiration for this (okay, it’s a total rip-off) is an essentially identical dessert served at Frankies Spuntino. If you want to elevate this ending a bit, try Claire Saffitz’s elegant Prune Mascarpone Cake from her book Dessert Person. Even for the most ending-skeptical person, this is a perfect finish to any meal. (Pilsen Community Books)