What’s with that ending?

What’s a book you think deserves a sequel?

Some authors do a really good job of telling a story in one book. They wrap everything up with a neat little bow and you’re left satisified, or mostly satisfied with the ending. Like Stephen King. Unless he’s writing something that is going to be a series, his books are singular entities. And that’s great. He’s good at that.

Then there’s motherf*&^%$# Tom Perrotta. I’d like to have a word with Tom. Outside. In the parking lot. Just a little chat. I have read exactly one book by him, but I also watched a series on HBO that was based on a book he wrote. Both endings are stupid. I’m being dramatic. The stories are really good, but in the one book I did read (The Abstinence Teacher), the ending was ridiculously ambiguous and I needed about 50 more pages to have a satisfying ending. Or perhaps a sequel. Just a little one.

The book that got turned into a series was The Leftovers. It was a good show! Basically, people all over the world disappear all at once, rapture style. Except nobody can figure out the rhyme or reason for who got “raptured” and who didn’t. It’s not an actual rapture, per se, because the pope was one of the “leftovers” who didn’t get taken up. It’s a whole thing. There’s a cult that forms because of it and families are torn apart and it’s good drama. But the ending! There needed to be another season or a sequel for the book, I’m guessing, since I didn’t read the book. I think I understand the meaning of the end, but I distinctly remember Josh and I disagreed about what it meant.

Don’t come at me with how that kind of ending is good because it makes you think and it prompts discussion and reader interpretation is important too. I don’t like that. I need to know definitively what happens to every character I have become invested in. Even if they die or it’s a tragic end, it’s at least an end. Get it together Tom. I have another one of his books on my shelf. I think it’s a collection of short stories? Now that I’ve brought him to the front of my brain, I may bring that book to the top of the list for my next read. I’m getting closer to the end of Pride & Prejudice.

Sequels or not, Tom Perrotta just needs to rethink how he ends his books. Or else meet me in the parking lot. I really do just want to talk.