Posted on December 30, 2022
I’ve always been a sensitive person. I mourn road kill before I’ve realized it’s only a plastic bag on the highway. I cry during every movie, especially ones for children. Irish goodbyes are my favorite way to leave a going-away party or the last day of even the worst job, not out of rudeness or a desire to be aloof—I just can’t bear endings of any kind.
It makes sense, then, that in a cruel twist of fate I would be drawn to the arts, doomed to have my heart broken multiple times a week by the things I read, watch, listen to. It would be easier to watch reality TV or read romance novels; I can see the Bachelor break up with dozens of women and never shed a tear, and an enemies-to-lovers subplot will unfold in precisely the same way over and over without causing any discomfort. But, unfortunately, I return to novels and short stories that wrestle with the things I’d rather turn away from. Trauma. Loss. The spoiling of a relationship.
Many books have broken my heart in the last few months, but I’m trying to learn what it means to be okay without a happy ending, and what those alternatively sad or neutral endings can look like, and how to still love something after it’s over. Here’s what I have been reading.
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
This novel definitely exists outside the binary of “happy” and “sad” endings. In it, a Brooklyn-based writer tells the story of her relationship in a detached third person, every memory pressed between an objective description of a historical event or scientific fact as though she can barely think of her marriage for more than a single page. The writer and her partner move in together, then a diversion. They get pregnant, then another diversion. Every plot movement is thwarted by the narrator’s preoccupation with ideas, but so is the relationship—after years of idealizing her husband, she is completely shocked by his betrayal, and struggles to find meaning in the aftermath.
The story is driven by tone and association. The relationship the narrator has with her daughter constantly mirrors her relationship with her husband, merging different kinds of love. Each small moment carries so much intensity—the daughter says, when the narrator accidentally ruins her favorite blanket in the washer, “That was my best thing…why would you ruin my best thing?”—and that question becomes a refrain throughout the book, as does a pivotal moment when the writer tells her husband her happiest moment, and he responds, disappointed, “I was hoping your happiest memory might include me.” What Offill seems to show is that a life is an accumulation of these small moments, and most of them are neither happy nor sad; she creates the association. Though I won’t spoil it, the end of the book lands in that same kind of space—a deep and fragile connection that could shatter at any moment, but is still worthy of preservation.
Little Weirds by Jenny Slate
It’s hard to define this book. A lyrical memoir told in fragments that uses disembodied language to describe the mundanity of life? Slate tells us, “This book is a party—not a set of grievances. It’s a weird party for a woman who has returned from grief…a book that honors my fragmentation by giving itself to you in pieces.” There is no real plot, or even much scene, just a fun exercise in estranging ourselves from the world and understanding Slate’s feelings as a woman, artist, and partner. To get a glimpse of what that looks like, here’s an opening from one of the first chapters:
I was born during the great Potato Chip, in the time of Jewish Deli Tongue Sandwich. I was born and the other items that were in the love net in which they caught me were Open Car Windows, Ghosts, Fear, Horniness, Rabbit Holes, Bird Nests, Emily Dickinson, Petticoats, Bustiers, Grapefruit Halves with Maraschino Cherry in the Middle…”
…and the list continues for another half a page. Since there’s no traditional narrative, there’s also no real ending, but the closest Slate gets to one is in the fourth-to-last chapter, when she imagines a hypothetical lifetime spent with her partner, a first-person direct address, and their children, and their deaths.
I died but it was so small compared to how I had lived so much and for so long with you, alive…I died and I never knew what it was like to not be invited to your birthday party, to have to give you a present a week before or after the actual birthday. I died and had always given you the present right on time.
She’s not describing a real relationship, a real child, a real death. The death chapter isn’t even the last chapter of the book; we end in the present, on Slate’s happier, more self-actualized life. So the ending doesn’t have to be the real ending.
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
I read Exit West for a class this semester. It follows Nadia and Saeed, a couple who meet right as their (unnamed) country is taken over by a violent militant group, resulting in the deaths of their neighbors, family, and friends. At the same time, mysterious doors are appearing all across the world, capable of instant transportation, and Nadia and Saeed spend the novel protecting each other as they travel from place to place, looking for safety and meaning in a world that continues to traumatize them. The story is mostly linear, with snippets of other lives that are being impacted by the doors.
What propelled me as a reader was my need to see Nadia and Saeed find security, my need to see them turn out okay. The ending achieves that—but it’s bittersweet, and though most of my classmates agreed that it was a happy ending, I was completely devastated by it. The finality of the story loomed over me for days. Even as I write this, I resist the fact that their story finished there—is that selfish, to want the characters to change their minds, to want what I want instead?
Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang
Admittedly, I’m still reading this collection, but I think the first short story fits perfectly into this list. Christina is our narrator, a first-generation Chinese-American girl living in Brooklyn with her parents, who are struggling to afford even a toilet plunger. Christina’s parents suffer from job to job, humiliation after humiliation—they have a list of “things we need to buy immediately or else we’ve just lost all human dignity”—but Christina is involved in all of their decisions, and the family feels more like a dysfunctional trio of friends. Christina describes the nights she slept between her parents, “Our arms were cramped from holding each other, and I knew that I wasn’t supposed to like this, that I was supposed to want to go over to my friend’s house . . . but the truth was I only ever wanted to be sandwiched between my parents.” The last scene in the story is the family pushing their car into the river after it finally breaks down, and Christina clinging to her parents with the knowledge that they will soon be separated.
This seems like an unbearable, utterly cruel ending. But it’s important, I think, that the story ends here; we’ll never know if Christina’s parents actually go through with sending her back to China, or what her life there will be like. The story just wants us to focus on this moment of closeness between three people who are permanently linked, to live in the present, where they are together, still.
NELLIE HILDEBRANDT is a first-year fiction student from South Carolina. She currently serves as an editorial assistant for The Greensboro Review, and managing editor for storySouth.
