Novels with unsatisfactory endings
Audrey Schulman's novel The Cage starts out promisingly. Byerl Findham, a young female photographer from Boston, MA, is hired for a photo shoot. Not just any photo shoot, too. She is to go on an expedition sponsored by a major nature magazine to photograph bears up near the Arctic Circle. Standing at 5'1", she can easily fit in a cage to protect her from them while getting pictures.
Soon Byerl is on her way to the Great White North and joins the rest of her team. There are two other photographers and a young guide, all men. After getting ready in the town of Churchill, Manitoba, they are off in a special camper for the wild. But despite the safety of the cage, the bears still derail the shoot by gnawing at the camper's fuel tanks. Soon the tanks are ruptured and the fuel gone.
This leaves the quartet with no other option but to trek back to Churchill on foot. One of the male photographers dies from hypothermia, the other from a bear attack. By novel's end, the young guide (with whom Byerl has struck up a relationship) is stuck on the trail with a hurt leg. He is locked and loaded against bear attack, but by no means invulnerable. He has no option but to send Byerl on alone to summon help.
When she gets to Churchill, she knocks on a door, which causes a commotion inside the house. The door begins to open... and then the novel ends abruptly! What about Byerl's boyfriend? Does he make it? What does the magazine have to say about the fouled-up expedition? The plot resolution, however, does not tie up any of these loose ends. Apparently, the reader is left to draw their own conclusions, but is that really fair? We've come all this way and this is the best the author can do to end the book?
Whenever I pick up a novel, my expectation is it has a plot where things are resolved in the end. To be sure it can be a plot that plays things close to the chest; especially if it is a murder mystery or some other kind of whodunit. But once the last chapter is reached, satisfying resolution is expected. Sadly, some authors just do not know how to do this and cop out, which begs the question: Has anybody else ever read a novel whose ending left them unsatisfied?
Article image courtesy of Goodreads.