Back when I was twelve, I read A Particular Book by A Particular Author (we don’t actually have it in our system, so we shall let this particular tome reside in infamy).  I loved this book, adored the characters, and couldn’t wait to find out how they would conquer all the enemies ranged against them and survive.  There was also a love triangle in this book, as well, and I knew, down in my bones, with every fiber of my being which of the two suitors this heroine should marry.  In the end, the protagonists triumphed, as they should, and all seemed well.  And then…

The heroine picked the wrong guy.

I mean, nothing against him.  As an adult, I can see that choosing this particular hero was the heroine’s way of accepting the changes in herself, and her willingness to begin a new life.  But to my twelve-year-old heart, he was just wrong.  Not to mention that the hero on whom I had pinned all my hopes and dreams was left crushed and lonely, sitting on a train bound for New York.

So, being the mature reader I was (and still am), I threw the book against a wall and refused to speak to anyone for two days.

Since then, I have managed to accept that all books will not end the way I want them to end.  I still don’t like it, but I try to bear in mind the words of Frank Herbert, author of the Dune sagas: “There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.”

Those words have saved many books from being hurled against walls, and also saved many relationships, as the excuse “I just read a book that ended badly!” only works so many times when one is trying to explain why one can’t stop crying/can’t stop yelling/can’t get out of bed today.  As we discussed a few weeks ago in regards to the release of Go Set A Watchman, the characters we love, and the worlds they inhabit don’t always exist solely in an author’s imagination.  They become part of us, and we become part of them.

This gives us, as readers, a certain amount of agency over the things we read.  For me, books that I love are a lot like home movies.  They start, and they stop, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the characters cease to exist when the action stops (unless they die, and their world is obliterated by aliens, or something like that).  They are still alive in some kind of Land of Unwritten Books, where readers, like you and I, can imagine their further adventures.

In the Land of Unwritten Books, which I have just named, and to which I will now continually refer, lovers can be reunited, despite any distance that may separate them, the detective always gets his crook…or the crook finds a clever way to escape…the magician’s wife finds a final spell…the hero comes home in time…the missing letter gets delivered at last, and everyone is home in time for tea.

For me, that poor hero, alone in his train car, returns to New York, and meets another woman who challenges him, who makes him laugh, and helps him recover from the rejection he received at the end of That Particular Book.  Perhaps he thinks back on those times with a bittersweet fondness, but in the Land of Unwritten Books, he isn’t sad or lonely for very long.  No one needs to be, if that is how we, as readers wish it–at least in our own minds.  That may not change the outcome on the final page, but it may make your heart a little lighter when you get there.