The joy of unhappy endings

A familiar story starts like this: "Once upon a time. . ." And how does it end? Well, you know that, too. It ends like this: "And they lived happily ever after."

Boring.

A man in one of my book-discussion classes once asked me in exasperation: "Do you ever pick happy books?" I paused, contemplated his question, and replied: "No."

It wasn't until he asked me that question that day that I realized my preference for books full of turbulence, books that take meandering routes through pain and sorrow, books that most certainly do not end with HEA (happily ever after). Not for me the prince and princess riding off into the sunset. I want to know what happens after that, when their horse gets stuck in the mud, or they get lost, or when they discover they don't really get along.

Once I attended an author event featuring two successful authors of Young Adult fiction, one of whom talked a great deal about how YA readers like happy endings. "They like things," she said, waving her long arms around to demonstrate, "tied up in a big red bow." She waved her arms around some more to make sure we understood. Big loopy happy bows, all neat and trim and with no loose strings.

Given the huge popularity of books like The Fault in Our Stars, featuring a girl with cancer, If I Stay, about a girl who is comatose after a car accident, and Wonder, featuring a child with a facial deformity, I doubt that the Big Red Bow theory is still in play. As my husband told his brother when, as children they were taken to see a Broadway production of Hair, with all its angst and drama: "That's real life." Real life doesn't have a neat ending. Real life may have plenty of happy moments, but then it just keeps barreling along.

Writing in The Guardian in late 2013, books editor Richard Lea laments the trend toward sad endings in contemporary literary fiction. While declaring that neither Jane Austen nor Charles Dickens had any hesitance about ending on an upbeat note, he cites comments by numerous writers who are opposed to the positive approach. Lea quotes author Ben Marcus quoting Kafka: "The task of accomplishing the negative remains imposed upon us; the positive is already given."

Look, there's nothing wrong with happy endings. For myself, in real life, I prefer 'em. But for some reason, many authors of literary fiction seem to shy away from them these days. Why?

Here's a reason I found in a blog by an author named Tobias Mastgrave: "I hate writing happy endings to stories. . . Now, it's not that I dislike reading stories that end with joyous circumstances. . . I just do not like writing them. I find them dull and boring and difficult to write. Not many people can write them well, either — they usually come off sounding clichéd."

I also found an informal poll on Goodreads about whether readers like HEA. One reader says: "I don't dislike happy endings, but I really can't stomach the REALLY happy endings. You know, the ones where whole plot lines have to twist in order to make sure EVERYONE gets one."

In other words, HEA can be manipulative. Or phony. An unhappy ending, says another Goodreads reader, leaves things open to possibility, and makes the reader think about what might come next. Another cautions that, while some readers might prefer HEA, "that's not how real life works."

Or as one wise reader summed it up: "I do have a soft spot for un-happy endings. Sometimes they're so refreshing."