I have decided ...
that Marta is right ... that I have to simply start writing the rest of the story and see what the characters do, say, and think ... and watch how they react to the other charactres ... let them tell the story ... and if I end up with a badly finished story ... well ... life is like that, isn't it? I know fiction is not supposed to be as messy as life ... but not all good stories have tidy endings ... and sometimes those that do have readers thinking the writer perhaps made a mistake by wanting a neat plot ending ...
That happened for me with The Story of Edgar Sawtelle . He killed off the protagonist and his nemesis and had the best dogs run off ... and I found myself wondering whatever happened to the protagonist's mother who was now left with absolutely nothing ... no husband, no lover, no business, no barn, no dogs, and no son ... and a writer who simply left her bereft and didn't seem to care ...
And this was an excellent novel up till then ... but it was as if he simply got tired of it and couldn't be bothered to deal with all those threads left hanging so he destroyed all of them.
I had intended to give my puzzle to the birthday party guests but we were all having too much fun eating, drinking, laughing and talking to bother with a party game. There were eleven of us here and Kenya got way more than her fair share of loves. She was delighted.
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2 comments:
I'm with you on Edgar Sawtell. I just loved the book up until the end. My imagination was racing trying to figure out how Edgar would be saved. Would Essay use her decision making skills to save him? she had already confronted Claude in the yard. Would Almondine's ghost save him? NO! I was mad!
Hi Sharon,
Welcome to my blog. I hope you will drop in from time to time. I am glad I was not alone in my disappointment with this odd ending. At first I wondered if I had missed something important because I couldn't believe a writer of his calibre had opted for a cheap cop-out.
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