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afterplague 's review for:
I'm Thinking of Ending Things
by Iain Reid
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I am baffled that it seems like so many people enjoyed this book. I swear this is like the fifth highly recommended book I've read that I've totally missed the hype. I'm also genuinely confused at how they could've possibly made this book into a movie. They had to have changed so much about it. I'm going to spoiler some stuff.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things is told from the perspective of an unnamed female narrator. She's thinking about breaking up with her boyfriend Jake, even though he's a pretty perfect guy. He's handsome and intelligent with a job as a research scientist in a laboratory. The couple is on their way to have dinner with Jake's family, and the woman is thinking about whether or not the relationship has run its course.
So much of this book is a single car ride. It's possible to make something like that interesting, and I was willing to give the novella the benefit of the doubt. Some of the conversation during the road trip does pose some good questions that allow the characters to engage in deeper, character building discussions. These conversations do confirm that Jake is an intelligent person, and it allows the narrator to delve deeper into her feelings about their relationship. She ponders whether their love is more valuable than being alone, even if she enjoys the solitude and routine that comes from being isolated. I don't mind these conversations and I think there's a way to make it work.
It's just that it doesn't stop. The conversation keeps going and going and going and GOING. I kept waiting for anything to happen, and instead I was subjected to endless pondering. Endless philosophizing. I started to feel like I was at a party, sober, while the people around me were high off their asses and trying to be deep. It started to feel try-hard, cringe, embarrassing. The author tried to tie the idea of relationships to the expansion of the universe or something. It's just pretentious to the point of meaninglessness.
I had hopes at the beginning. There's some good tension with the narrator having this stalker, the Caller. This mysterious person calls her, sometimes a dozen times in one night, and always repeats the same few sentences. I thought this was going somewhere. I had theories of how it could be tied to Jake and his family. It goes pretty much nowhere and left me completely disappointed.
When the couple finally arrives at the farmhouse there's some attempt at atmosphere. It's pretty effective. The farmhouse is a creepy place, and there are some creepy elements like the dead, frozen lambs and the story about the pigs. Again, my hopes started to build that after an agonizingly slow start I would finally get something like a creepy horror story. Imagine my disappointment again when nothing that happens in the farmhouse makes any sense, is frightening at all, and leads to anything. Jake's mom and dad are off which is good. It adds to the feeling of wrongness, but it kind of just feels like they're weird for the sake of the genre.
I think that's my problem with a lot of the farm section. Because there isn't really a central "plot" going on none of the creepy moments feel grounded. It feels a bit like I'm walking through a haunted house. Oh, there's the dead livestock. Ah, a creepy basement. Ooo, a mysterious painting. However, none of it is tied together through the narrative. I'm okay with horror clichés. They're clichés for a reason, but because this story is not trying to tell the type of narrative that would truly utilize these clichés it's nothing but meaningless window dressing.
Finally, our characters leave the house having learned nothing and progressed the plot exactly zero. A blizzard is starting so the narrator would like to get home quickly. She's more convinced than ever that she wants to end things. I'd like to note as well that this phrasing is always how its written. "Ending things." I understand why, but it did make the reading experience a little more awkward. Most people when thinking about or talking about ending their relationship will vary up their vocabulary. This author doesn't because this is supposed to be a sort of twist or double entendre. I don't think it's particularly clever because I saw right through it. Anyway, in the middle of this blizzard Jake decides he wants to stop at Dairy Queen and get dessert. This entire scene is super pointless. It's supposed to give you some more hints about the ultimate twist, but in practicality the action is "the couple get frozen lemonades. The end."
So, they leave the Dairy Queen and start their drive home again. Jake decides to pull into his old school to throw away their cups, even though there is literally no reason to do so. He and narrator start making out in the car when Jake sees a man watching them from the window and flies into an incensed rage. He sprints out of the car to go into the school to confront this guy and after a while the narrator follows. I was completely checked out at this point. I hated Jake as a character and none of his actions made any sense to me. I understood what the twist was at this point and I just didn't care. I didn't understand the narrator's actions either. Why would she be willing to have sex with Jake in a car in front of his old school in the middle of a blizzard when all she's been talking about is how much she wants to go home?
In the school the narrator is stalked by the custodian, but then she realizes it's just Jake and he's trying to psychologically torture her. Then she realizes she is Jake. Tada! The twist! This entire story was told from the point of view of Jake imagining the point of view of a girl he's dating who doesn't really exist. It's difficult to tell at this point if anything that we saw happen actually happened. I'm willing to believe at least that Jake did go to dinner with his parents and that part of the reason that they were behaving so strangely is that Jake was in the middle of a schizophrenic episode. Jake is also imagining the Caller. He's the custodian at the school. This is where he works. Anyway, he crawls into a closet and stabs himself in the throat with a hanger, ending things. Yep, that's the double entendre.
This twist straight up pissed me off. I knew that there was going to be a "hallucinations" twist just based on the way the narrator was experiencing things, but the fact that she didn't really exist was just too much for me. It made the huge portion of the book that was just the conversation in the car retrospectively extremely annoying. It's just Jake thinking about himself as the perfect man, and still being self-hating towards himself anyway. He literally thinks about how attracted to him this imaginary girl is and how even though he's perfect they're not going to work out. It's just bonkers.
I can't believe I wasted my time on this. I can't believe how many people I've heard say they loved this book. I can't believe I hadn't heard a single negative review. This is just baffling. God, what else is there to say? I know this is just a novella, but I wish I could get my wasted hours back. Terrible.
I'm Thinking of Ending Things is told from the perspective of an unnamed female narrator. She's thinking about breaking up with her boyfriend Jake, even though he's a pretty perfect guy. He's handsome and intelligent with a job as a research scientist in a laboratory. The couple is on their way to have dinner with Jake's family, and the woman is thinking about whether or not the relationship has run its course.
So much of this book is a single car ride. It's possible to make something like that interesting, and I was willing to give the novella the benefit of the doubt. Some of the conversation during the road trip does pose some good questions that allow the characters to engage in deeper, character building discussions. These conversations do confirm that Jake is an intelligent person, and it allows the narrator to delve deeper into her feelings about their relationship. She ponders whether their love is more valuable than being alone, even if she enjoys the solitude and routine that comes from being isolated. I don't mind these conversations and I think there's a way to make it work.
It's just that it doesn't stop. The conversation keeps going and going and going and GOING. I kept waiting for anything to happen, and instead I was subjected to endless pondering. Endless philosophizing. I started to feel like I was at a party, sober, while the people around me were high off their asses and trying to be deep. It started to feel try-hard, cringe, embarrassing. The author tried to tie the idea of relationships to the expansion of the universe or something. It's just pretentious to the point of meaninglessness.
I had hopes at the beginning. There's some good tension with the narrator having this stalker, the Caller. This mysterious person calls her, sometimes a dozen times in one night, and always repeats the same few sentences. I thought this was going somewhere. I had theories of how it could be tied to Jake and his family. It goes pretty much nowhere and left me completely disappointed.
When the couple finally arrives at the farmhouse there's some attempt at atmosphere. It's pretty effective. The farmhouse is a creepy place, and there are some creepy elements like the dead, frozen lambs and the story about the pigs. Again, my hopes started to build that after an agonizingly slow start I would finally get something like a creepy horror story. Imagine my disappointment again when nothing that happens in the farmhouse makes any sense, is frightening at all, and leads to anything. Jake's mom and dad are off which is good. It adds to the feeling of wrongness, but it kind of just feels like they're weird for the sake of the genre.
I think that's my problem with a lot of the farm section. Because there isn't really a central "plot" going on none of the creepy moments feel grounded. It feels a bit like I'm walking through a haunted house. Oh, there's the dead livestock. Ah, a creepy basement. Ooo, a mysterious painting. However, none of it is tied together through the narrative. I'm okay with horror clichés. They're clichés for a reason, but because this story is not trying to tell the type of narrative that would truly utilize these clichés it's nothing but meaningless window dressing.
Finally, our characters leave the house having learned nothing and progressed the plot exactly zero. A blizzard is starting so the narrator would like to get home quickly. She's more convinced than ever that she wants to end things. I'd like to note as well that this phrasing is always how its written. "Ending things." I understand why, but it did make the reading experience a little more awkward. Most people when thinking about or talking about ending their relationship will vary up their vocabulary. This author doesn't because this is supposed to be a sort of twist or double entendre. I don't think it's particularly clever because I saw right through it. Anyway, in the middle of this blizzard Jake decides he wants to stop at Dairy Queen and get dessert. This entire scene is super pointless. It's supposed to give you some more hints about the ultimate twist, but in practicality the action is "the couple get frozen lemonades. The end."
So, they leave the Dairy Queen and start their drive home again. Jake decides to pull into his old school to throw away their cups, even though there is literally no reason to do so. He and narrator start making out in the car when Jake sees a man watching them from the window and flies into an incensed rage. He sprints out of the car to go into the school to confront this guy and after a while the narrator follows. I was completely checked out at this point. I hated Jake as a character and none of his actions made any sense to me. I understood what the twist was at this point and I just didn't care. I didn't understand the narrator's actions either. Why would she be willing to have sex with Jake in a car in front of his old school in the middle of a blizzard when all she's been talking about is how much she wants to go home?
In the school the narrator is stalked by the custodian, but then she realizes it's just Jake and he's trying to psychologically torture her. Then she realizes she is Jake. Tada! The twist! This entire story was told from the point of view of Jake imagining the point of view of a girl he's dating who doesn't really exist. It's difficult to tell at this point if anything that we saw happen actually happened. I'm willing to believe at least that Jake did go to dinner with his parents and that part of the reason that they were behaving so strangely is that Jake was in the middle of a schizophrenic episode. Jake is also imagining the Caller. He's the custodian at the school. This is where he works. Anyway, he crawls into a closet and stabs himself in the throat with a hanger, ending things. Yep, that's the double entendre.
This twist straight up pissed me off. I knew that there was going to be a "hallucinations" twist just based on the way the narrator was experiencing things, but the fact that she didn't really exist was just too much for me. It made the huge portion of the book that was just the conversation in the car retrospectively extremely annoying. It's just Jake thinking about himself as the perfect man, and still being self-hating towards himself anyway. He literally thinks about how attracted to him this imaginary girl is and how even though he's perfect they're not going to work out. It's just bonkers.
I can't believe I wasted my time on this. I can't believe how many people I've heard say they loved this book. I can't believe I hadn't heard a single negative review. This is just baffling. God, what else is there to say? I know this is just a novella, but I wish I could get my wasted hours back. Terrible.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide