Many times, talking about literature with friends and literature, that curious phrase has come up: "the book was not such a big deal, but it was worth reading at the end." And that's when one wonders, is a book worth it if its outcome does not leave us with a good taste in the mouth? Is the resolution of a frame overrated? Let's browse these following books with the best endings The review of which begins with the last sentences of each one.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez
However, before reaching the final verse, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, as it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be swept away by the wind and banished from the memory of men in the instant in which Aureliano Babilonia had just deciphered the scrolls, and that everything written in them was unrepeatable since always and forever because the lineages condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second chance on earth.
An old friend of mine was one of those who said that phrase mentioned in the introduction when I discovered that she was still wearing One Hundred Years of Solitude in the bag. Soon after, I too dared to immerse myself in the stories of the Buendía and of that lost town of the Colombian Caribbean called Macondo. Days of consulting the genealogical tree of its characters in a Google diagram, of linking stories and awaiting an epic ending that, in part, confirms the status of a masterpiece of the great story of our friend Gabo.
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
“I'll think about all this tomorrow, about Tara. There it will be easier for me to bear it. Yes, tomorrow I will think about a way to talk to Rhett. After all, tomorrow will be another day ”.
With this phrase, gone With the Wind, a multi-seller novel by Margaret Mitchell published in 1936 and adapted for the cinema in 1939, left an ending open to the imagination of a reader who throughout the pages followed the story of love and heartbreak of Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler, characters forced to survive in the middle of the Civil War. The question is: do you think Scarlett would finally find a way to get Rhett back?
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevsky
But here begins another story, that of the slow renewal of a man, that of his progressive regeneration, his gradual passage from one world to another and his stepped knowledge of a totally unknown reality. In all this there would be material for a new narrative, but ours is over.
Throughout Dostoevsky's work, the reader also met the demons of Rodion Raskolnikov, a student who one day decided to murder a moneylender and steal all her money in order to aspire to the successful life that he believed he deserved. And despite a narrative that many continue to consider complicated for depending on what audience, the work was heading towards a denouement with airs of a happy ending despite the infamy that the story distilled in much of the plot.
Would you like to reread Crime and Punishment?
The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Examine it carefully so that you know how to recognize it, if one day, traveling through Africa, you cross the desert. If you happen to pass by, do not hurry, I beg of you, and stop for a bit, just under the star. If a child comes to you, if this child laughs and has golden hair and never answers your questions, you will immediately guess who it is. Be nice to him! And let me know quickly that you have returned. Don't leave me so sad!
And so ended one of the most timeless works in history. Because like that Saint-Exupéry mutated into an aviator lost in the desert, we all regained faith in the world thanks to that child who came from space to better analyze our society than the experts themselves. One of the books with the best endings, without a doubt.
Read The Little Prince?
Ana Karenina, by León Tolstoy
But as of today my life, my whole life, regardless of what may happen, will no longer be unreasonable, it will not be meaningless as it has been until now, but in each and every one of its moments it will possess the undoubted sense of good, that I own to infuse in it.
Despite a first edition that aroused discord between Tolstoy and his editors, time finally ended up confirming the greatness of the outcome of one of the great works of Russian literature. The determination of Vronsky, who yearns to die after the suicide of Ana Karenina, by focusing on a simpler life and instilling the best intentions through the daughter of the protagonist, it became a more than successful outcome.
Reeds and clay, by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez
And while Uncle Tòni's lament tore through the silence of dawn like a scream of despair, La Borda, seeing his father's back, leaned over to the edge of the grave and kissed the livid head with a fiery kiss, of immense passion, of love. without hope, daring, before the mystery of death, to reveal for the first time the secret of his life.
The triangle formed by Tonet, Neleta and La Borda in Canes and clay It ended with the death of Tonet and the intention of his adoptive sister to confess a secret that he carried throughout the novel.
La Regenta, by Leopoldo Alas Clarín
After closing he was apprehensive of having heard something in there; she pressed her face to the gate and looked toward the back of the chapel, peering into the darkness. Under the lamp he imagined seeing a shadow larger than before ... And then he redoubled his attention and heard a rustle like a faint moan, like a sigh.Or, he entered and recognized the fainted Regent. Celedonio felt a miserable desire, a perversion of the perversion of his lust: and in order to enjoy a strange pleasure, or to prove whether he enjoyed it, he bent his disgusting face over that of the Regent and he kissed the lips. Ana came back to life tearing the mists of a delirium that caused nauseas. he thought he felt the cold, slimy belly of a toad on his mouth.
And so, Ana, protagonist of The Regenta, succumbed to marginalization by the people of Old, that place in the provinces where Clarín made one of the great criticisms of La Restauración society.
What are, for you, the books with the best endings?