Just finished I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and did NOT love it. Very spoilery discussion in comments, share your thoughts!
Just finished I’m Thinking of Ending Things, and did NOT love it. Very spoilery discussion in comments, share your thoughts!
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Was I the only one not surprised by the ending too much? Right from the start, you can tell the narrator is quite unreliable. Then there are hints that there will be a twist involving schizophrenia/dissociative personality disorder/something similar. By the time the first person language changed to “we” I was just relieved it was finally being confirmed.
Besides story quality I feel the resolution came too quickly and relied on the tropes of dissociative personality disorder / suicide which feels tired and disrespectful of actual struggles people have.
My final issue (that I can think of for now!) is that the female narrator was never named and she was the one absorbed into the character of Jake/the janitor. Like we have never seen a story with an accessorized, anonymous, terrified female protagonist ?
I haven’t even read this book yet but given your review, I’m so over it already. It’s like two over done horror tropes thrusted together.
That’s totally how I felt! I was so excited to read it, too.
It felt too contrived to me though it did manage to occasionally creep me out. I caught myself wondering where the author – as opposed to the character in the story- was taking this and that’s rarely a good thing.
This review is spot on imo: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/books/review/im-thinking-of-ending-things-iain-reid.html
@Nína that’s a great way to put it, I also found myself wondering what the author was doing! Will read this review, thank you!
Also, If you’d like to try a novel that manages to show the decent into psychological breakdown in a powerful and respectful way I recommend Surfacing by Margaret Atwood – if you haven’t read it already.
@Nína omg thank you! I haven’t read it yet but love Margaret Atwood. Will give it a try 🙂