Crime writer Mickey Spillane said, ‘The most important part of a story is the ending. No-one reads a book to get to the middle.’ This view tells an important truth about the construction of stories. But it’s not the whole truth. In literary fiction, an ending often gathers a concentration of effects that operate not only at the levels of character and plot, but also look back to earlier elements. Through encouraging the reader to reflect on the novel’s major themes and ideas, such endings leave a lasting emotional resonance and intellectual impact. Events put in motion at the beginning of the text have developed through a chain of cause and effect to reach their final outcome. The ending of any well-constructed narrative — whether a popular thriller or a classic set text — will be powerful when, as Aristotle argued, events feel at once surprising and yet completely necessary, both unexpected and inevitable.
Endings are largely determined by genre. When we read a romance, we expect that the central couple will get together; this is known in romance publishing as an HEA (Happily Ever After). For example, Pride and Prejudice (1813) provides the happy ending that romance readers crave, but in a way that feels unexpected. The genre still provides happy endings today, but often with a twist in which the couple’s story concludes on an upbeat moment of not necessarily being happy together forever, but happy in the present moment. This variant is known as an HFN (Happy For Now). Examples include Sally Rooney’s Normal People (2018), in which, while Marianne and Connell are reunited, their future remains uncertain.
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