back to article Cannonbridge sells us a dummy – great premise, crap ending

When you set up a central mystery in a story, make it the crux of your tale and drop tantalising clues about it all the way through, you’ve set yourself a difficult task. You’ve made a promise to the reader from page one that the answer to your mystery is a good one, you’ve beckoned them from page to page with the assurance …

  1. unitron
    Flame

    Thanks for the warning

    Although at least it has an ending, unlike Stephen King's "The Colorado Kid".

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Thanks for the warning

      Although at least it has an ending, unlike Stephen King's "The Colorado Kid".

      Ending isn't necessarily necessary.

      Kafka wrote three unfinished novels - two without ending - yet they're quite delightful read, in bizarrely Kafkaesque way of course. I would've probably enjoyed them more if they were finished, though, but they're still recommended reading for all.

  2. Ketlan
    Devil

    Could always be worse

    It can't possibly be worse than Donna Tartt's second book The Little Friend. A terrible and difficult book to read with a damp squib of a pay-off. Amazing that she could write a modern classic like The Secret History then follow it with the worst pile of crap in recent history.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Could always be worse

      An author's second published book may have been a previously written one - which publishers weren't interested in until after they had had a success. A "what else have you got?" situation.

      On the other hand the first novel is usually semi-autobiographical - the apocryphal "one book" that everyone is supposed to have inside them. Finding material for subsequent books either has to mine the same seam - or the author has to start becoming very inventive.

      Leslie Thomas reworked the same scenes several times in his novels. One could sense they were based on real life experiences. Later novels had the feeling that he had taken a short holiday somewhere "to ascertain the natives" - as a character in an earlier successful novel** would say.

      **The "Love Beach" is about ex-pats on Pacific islands - who had only meant to stay for a short visit.

      Even Terry Pratchett has produced some weak stories - particularly in parodying current world events. His output is usually rather good though.

      Simon Raven apparently wrote his later books when they were needed to finance his hedonistic lifestyle. His first novel, "An Inch of Fortune", written circa 1951, was not published until 1980.

      In spite of that motive - his two major series from 1964 onwards, "Alms for Oblivion" and "The First-Born of Egypt", did have characters and threads that hung together rather well. It is said he eventually wrote increasingly outrageous plots just to see when his readers would protest. He apparently decided to pull all the ends together with the final slayings in "The Troubadour" (1992).

      1. P. Lee

        Re: Could always be worse

        You don't read Terry Pratchet for the big reveal at the end, you read him for the scenery along the way, which is interesting and always entertaining. A mystery story, however, must have a good reveal at the end.

        1. Alien8n

          Re: Could always be worse

          To get the most from Terry Pratchett you have to have an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of literature, pop culture and both current and historical events. Sometimes, like Soul Music, the entire book is a setup for the one liner at the end, in others, like Masquerade, it's a subtle parody of circumstance that takes a comedic actor to the stage of one of the biggest musicals ever produced. Always told with humour, almost always with a message. His is the Ronnie Barker of situational comedy opposed to Douglas Adams' Rick Mayall slapstick. Both immensely fun to read in their own ways.

          1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
            Happy

            Re: Could always be worse

            Pratchett is very odd. You're reading along happily, and suddenly he drops you into a 3 page Hemmingway pastiche, followed immediately by a knob-gag.

            Often in the middle of one of his literary pastiches, he's also running puns at you, as well as one-liners. And as much innuendo as you can swallow...

            I've almost completely forgotten Soul Music, so I don't rememember what the last line was any more. I've got it in a box somewhere at home, I'm now going to have to go and dig it out. An excuse to re-read it, although that's a dangerous game as I'll probably end up looking at some of the other books from that era like Moving Pictures. I don't recall ever re-reading Masquerade. You bastard! You've just destroyed all my free evenings for the next couple of weeks!

            1. Alien8n

              Re: Could always be worse

              Soul Music was pretty much a setup for "there's a guy works down the chip shop, I swear he's elvish"

  3. Cliff

    Another pet peeve

    I can accept magic, science which doesn't tally with our own, mythical creatures etc. It's your world, you created it, you get to set the rules, I'll come along for the ride, no problem.

    What I hate is when universal rules are created then broken. You don't get it both ways to get you out of a hole. You don't 'only wake people up by falling backwards' but 'falling backwards in s minibus is different because lazy' without jarring me, the audience out of your story. The Force is some cool quasi religious thing? Or a fucking bacterial count? Victorian detective doing Victorian detective things right up until ancient Egyptian time machine magic... fuck you!

    The creative/audience contact is sacred. The audience is committing many hours of their life because you promised to take them on a brilliant voyage, so don't kick them out of the story when you write yourself into a corner! Man up! Write yourself out of that corner! Get even more creative, or go back and unwrite the setup you couldn't escape from. You make a promise to the reader/viewer when you set out, and deus ex machina endings died with the ancient Greeks.

  4. Kubla Cant
    Childcatcher

    Faux Victoriana

    Sounds a bit like The Quincunx by Charles Palliser, another faux Victorian novel.

    I got so engrossed in this that I read it all night in the expectation of a solution at the end. At 5am I gave up with 200 pages to go (it's about 800 pages long). When I recovered I read through to the finish, at which point my reaction was along the lines of "Eh?". A great read, but one that I've never felt the urge to repeat.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon