“Snow Country”

I liked Sebastian Faulks’ “Snow Country”. That’s the simple summary. It was all you would expect it to be: well-written, well-paced, interesting and complex characters and plot… However, now you expect there’s a ‘but’ coming…

But I thought the ending was far too neat and predictable. You could see what was coming from some way out, everything tied up in a far too-neat bow. I think there was plenty of scope for a little more ambiguity, openness. In a way, the ending turned the narrative from something complex and interesting (especially in terms of the characters) into little more than a ‘romance’.

Obviously not everyone will agree…

However, “Snow Country” did get me thinking – as a writer – about how I finish off fiction. Short stories offer much greater flexibility in terms of coming up with an ‘incomplete’ story; but novel-length? I couldn’t help but think back to my own work. If I were making the endings out of ten in terms of interest, realism, avoiding the obvious etc., how would they fare? Reasonably well I hope, though a mixed bag in one or two places (intentionally so) – which, at this stage, I’ll settle for.

Thankfully the ending of my latest novel (currently on the hunt for an agent) is tied up with no neat bows at all!