A Great Wrongness

I've never been a big fan of the type of "series" books that some authors produce that use the cliffhanger ploy to keep you buying the next, and the next and the next... 

Books ought to have satifsying endings.  I don't necessarily mean happy endings, and definitely NOT smarmy or sappy or contrived endings.  It's ok if there's death, or separation, or loss, as long as the ending  ties things up in an emotionally satisfying way. 

The latest Harry Potter was hugely disappointing to me in this way.  Not only was it NOT satisfying.  It was deeply disturbing.

I've been taking my time finishing it, wanting to savor the experience, even though my brother and nieces have long finished it and chaffed when I wouldn't let them talk about it around me.  They did let slip that somebody dies, but I wouldn't let them say any more.  I still wasn't prepared for the ending. 

"Wasn't prepared" is a huge understatement.  I was devastated.  Hugely affected.  Cried for hours.  Went into a kind of world-tilting daze. 

I even did that morning wake-up thing I used to do when mom first died.  You start to wake up, you feel normal and fine, and then you suddenly remember.  The thought would steal across my brain "she's dead", and then I'd come fully awake, heart pounding, world tilting, dark reality. 

I actually did that after finishing the Half-Blood Prince.  "He's dead" brought me fully awake with that same feeling of shock and dark reality.

The fact that the reality of a book stole into my "real" world is partly what disturbed me.  That I was so affected by it as to take it inside me that much.  But I've always been susceptible to deep emotional involvement.  I have to be careful what movies I watch, what books I read.  And with this one ... it triggers personal stuff for me, relating to my mom's death in many different ways. 

But there's something else too, that I just have to say.  I may even have to write Rowling and complain, not that she'd ever read it, but it might make me feel better to write it.

It's that nasty cliff-hanger tactic.  I've read several series of books in the sci-fi/fantasy genre that do that, and eventually I found myself getting irritated.  There was never a satisfactory ending, never a feeling of fullness in the heart when putting the book down.  There was only a feeling of needing more, needing the next book, needing the loose ends to tie up.  When I got wise to the keep-em-coming-back tactic, when I realized there would never be a truly satisfying ending, I stopped reading/buying those books. 

It's soap-opera literature is what it is.  It always leaves you wanting more.  And IMO it's a tacky ploy.  It says the author doesn't trust their characters and story lines to be enough to draw readers back.  Or worse, they just want the money from the next sale. 

Now, there are some good reasons to have a series with cliffhanger endings.  If the story is just too big to contain in one book, for instance, like the Trilogy of the Rings.  That's quite a different thing.

And it's possible to become addicted to and involved in the story and keep reading/buying, even though you know there won't be a satisfactory wrap-up.  It's a choice you're making then, and you make it knowing what to expect from that author.  You don't expect a wrap-up.  You know you're going to be left hanging and waiting for the next book.

But Rowling has never done that.  She's never stooped to using that ploy, all the Harry Potter endings have been very satisfying.  All the loose ends of the story got wrapped up in good enough ways, even though you knew there would be more to tell later, more and bigger hidden things coming in the next book.  But this last book took some kind of weird twist.  As an author, did Rowling suddenly decide to milk the sales?  Did somebody tell her this would be a good idea, to keep things unresolved, unexplained, unsatisfying?  Or maybe she got a blowed-up head and figures that she can do no wrong, that people will keep buying and reading no matter what.

But she's broken with what I have come to expect of her.  She's changed her MO.  And *that* is as disturbing to me as the fact that she left the world of HP in chaos and uncertainty and darkness.  She left the explanations and understandings .. unexplained.  The loose ends ... untied. 

It's a great wrongness.  And I wish it didn't bother me so much.  I feel really silly, being so affected by this.  I don't really have anybody I can talk to about this, so I'm confessing here.  I can't say "it's just a book".  And I trusted Rowling.  I trusted that the satisfying ending would be there, so I didn't have any guards up on my heart.  I trusted her.  It feels like a betrayal to me, a betrayal by the author, as much as the betrayals of the characters in the book.

Comments

[Christine]

Thank you so much for that link D!! I enjoyed reading that very much - good to know I'm not the only one, firstly, and secondly, the arguments make perfect sense to me. Greatly reassuring! Of course, it could be all wrong. But it was good to read the clues. Thanks again.

[David]

I found the ending to be about what I expected... sadly. I agree the manipulative "cliffhanger" thing is not good. but as I said to my daughter (who finished it anout the same time),

"Dumbledore Is Not Dead!"

And it seems a number of folk agree...

http://www.dumbledoreisnotdead.com/introduction.html

[Cin]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one disturbed by the cliff-hanger ending.