The importance of the happy ending

[SubZeroCat]

on the other hand the false happy ending of something like james frey's a million tiny pieces that is betrayed by the endnotes is contrived and yet appropriate. the endnotes destroy the happy ending with a shock that makes you wish the author hadn't put them in. especially if, like me, you'd fallen for the autobiographical nature of the novel that rapidly sucks you into believing it's a true story and not pure invention.

Yeah innit, I cried

But I like unhappy endings, there's far too much fake happiness around, gimme pain and suffering anyday.

 

[bluestreak]

Yeah innit, I cried

But I like unhappy endings, there's far too much fake happiness around, gimme pain and suffering anyday.

me too generally.

however, over the last few years i've noticed that at the low end of my mental levels i can't deal with most of the books i own - whe i'm really low i tend to read non-fiction histories, or uncomplicated lowbrow stuff like terry pratchett. but when cheerful or mid-range i consume unhappy/dark literature almost exclusively.

 

[waverunner]

OU - fair point about Charlotte's Web, I did enjoy it as a child.

And bluestreak, high fidelity is a great example. I liked the film until the ending

I don't like pain and suffering in books. More often than not I read them to get away from the real world. Am not saying I only buy ditzy chick lit books but some light hearted relief is needed every now and then from everyday grime and shit, isn't it?

 

[boohoo]

Nicholas Fisk is a pseudonym of ....

David Higginbottom.....

*sniggers*

 

[Neva]

The books called a million little pieces not a million tiny pieces but yeah the ending is bullshit. Not as bad as Oliver Twist though, the last page of that book should just be a picture of a giant

 

[D'wards]

Vernon God Little........SPOILER
























I thought the ending to this book was superb, triumphant and fitted the book just perfectly. A great happy ending!
In a lesser writer's hands the ending may have seemed cheesy and contrived, but it all came together beautifully, just like the tv movies oft mentioned in the book

 

[scifisam]

Vernon God Little........SPOILER
























I thought the ending to this book was superb, triumphant and fitted the book just perfectly. A great happy ending!
In a lesser writer's hands the ending may have seemed cheesy and contrived, but it all came together beautifully, just like the tv movies oft mentioned in the book

But it's also ambiguous, because it could be a dream or heaven.

I like realistic endings, and usually that means endings with an element of sadness and happiness in them. Pullman is a master of story endings.

Nick Hornby's 'How to Be Good' has the MOST depressing ending I've ever read.

If you haven't read Sarah Waters' Affinity, and plan to, don't click ctrl-a: The ending to that was incredibly sad, and I know some people who weren't expecting it and were distraught because of the way it ended. I thought it was a great twist. Great book.

 

[dylanredefined]

Gerald seymour seems obsessed with unhappy endings .Stopped reading him
when it became obvious all his heros come to a sticky end.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

All stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

But that story might be too long, like one of those movies where you go, 'they could have cut a half hour out of that.'

 

[Orang Utan]

on the other hand the false happy ending of something like james frey's a million tiny pieces that is betrayed by the endnotes is contrived and yet appropriate. the endnotes destroy the happy ending with a shock that makes you wish the author hadn't put them in. especially if, like me, you'd fallen for the autobiographical nature of the novel that rapidly sucks you into believing it's a true story and not pure invention.

What end notes? My edition has none. I can't remember the ending but I found it quite uplifting. Call me perverse but I find miserable books quite uplifting - cathartic I suppose. I learn something new about the human condition and I'm also made aware that despondency is relative and that I should be thankful for what I have. There are some rare exceptions of course. Happy Like Murderers (about Fred and Rose West) by Gordon Burn, although enlightening, is so unrelentingly grim that I couldn't bear to read it again, despite the brilliance of its writing and the humanity of its author. Crime And Punishment is not a book to read if you feel even the tiniest bit guilty about any minor bad thing you may have ever done. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind completely did my head in, but maybe just cos I was dwelling on certain things at the time. Generally though, it's happy happy neat endings, in which good people get what they deserve and bad people get their just dessert, that depress me most of all, cos I know that life is not like that and their is a kind of cruel dishonesty about those endings to books. But I do agree that from time to time you need those sort of endings to lift you from time to time - feelgood movies always work better for me than books, maybe because you are somehow made more aware of the artificiality of a film than you are with a book - mind you, I love Dickens and he outcheeses Hollywood by a longshot. Even more confused now.

 

[May Kasahara]

Robert Corimer's The Bumblebee flies anyway and I am the Cheese -depressing (but good) teenage books with the not so happy endings.

I haven't read either of those but did read The Chocolate War and After The First Death - both great books and refreshingly downbeat. Another excellent dystopian children's book is Futuretrack 5, by Robert Westall, which I read several times as a teen after discovering it in my school library.

 

[boohoo]

I haven't read either of those but did read The Chocolate War and After The First Death - both great books and refreshingly downbeat. Another excellent dystopian children's book is Futuretrack 5, by Robert Westall, which I read several times as a teen after discovering it in my school library.

I read the Chocolate War and beyond the Chocolate War which are excellent books ( I still own copies). Reads the scarecrows(?) by Robert Westall - creepy if I remember right.

 

[Orang Utan]

Reads the scarecrows(?) by Robert Westall - creepy if I remember right.

Ooh yeah - I read that - The Machine Gunners is good too

 

[floopadelic]

I generally like happy endings in films, as long as they're not too corny. I think it's because the cinema is a collective experience. There's something nice about being in a crowd where everyone goes away feeling better than when they came in.

Little Miss Sunshine was a good example of this recently - it could so easily have been corny but it managed to get it just right

 

[foamy]

Yeah but those are kiddie movies, you can't give kiddies a sad ending! (I'm not saying there aren't movies with shite happy endings, just that I can't think of one... I know there are some).

but in a lot of kids stories or movies (Bambi, Harry Potter, Finding Nemo, Lion King) the main character actually has the worst possible thing happen to them: they lose their parents so the happy ending is the antedote to that, they struggle and in the end it all comes good. After that much sadness, suffering and peril a happy ending isn't really that bad, wouldn't you say?

 

[Santino]

Unhappy endings can be as arbitrary as happy ones. If a story ends with a wedding it's "happy", but the fact is that life goes and you have to work hard at a relationship and anyway who knows what their kids may be like what with the sleepless nights and the teenage rebellion and the glayven. On the other hand, if it ends in a terible tragedy, you know, life goes on. The tone of the ending is determined by the point at which the author chooses to end it.

 

[DotCommunist]

Futuretrack 5, by Robert Westall

What a forgotten gem! I still have the Machine Gunners, its a fantastic tale. Now I'm going to have to get Futuretrack 5.