Freida, this is an interesting thread. Thanks for starting it.
For the two books you mentioned....I loved the Poisonwood Bible all the way through. I didn't notice her ranting especially. I have read it twice and the second time was better than the first. I will probably read it again and I will keep your comments in mind. This is why I love this site. Such different viewpoints and I always think that since I am not trained in Literature like some are I learn how to notice things I would not have done ordinarily.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.....I did not feel at all cheated by the ending...I was stunned the first time I read it. Of course I am an Agatha fan from way back.
Best Endings....well I would put Roger Ackroyd in that category and Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper, which actually had a double surprise ending.

Well, we are all different - I thought the end of My Sister's Keeper was wimping out. It took the decision I was waiting for and shimmied around it (trying not to give too much away here).
I loved The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I thought it was very clever and quite unexpected. I thought the ending of Then There Were None/Ten Little Indians/Ten Little N*ggers was closer to a cheat, but also very clever.

My recent bad ending experience was P D James' latest, The Lighthouse. To have the detective solve the mystery in a fever-induced dream is just a bit much for me.

I was very disappointed by the ending of The Handmaid's Tale when I read it years ago. I thought it was a copout for such a wonderful novel.

And The Magus (the first time Fowles wrote it! Couldn't be bothered with the second version). I suspected I wouldn't know ultimately what had been going on, and I didn't.

Dido

I actually particularly liked the ending of The Poisonwood Bible because I'd got to care so much about the characters that I needed to know how things went on; I also appreciated the 'history lesson'. I know that a lot of Americans find Kingsolver preachy, but I don't get that at all.

It's a long time since Roger Ackroyd, but I think I liked it. However, there's another Christie where she actually brings in a twin sister from Australia right at the very end, and that really really annoyed me! Unfortunately I cannot remember the title was so I can't warn you.

I agree with Dido on both The Handmaid's Tale and The Magus. With the former, I'm willing to forgive the lame ending to some extent because the concept of the novel is so good, but the latter is spoiled entirely by Fowler's refusal to make sense of anything. I don't know which version I read.

Best endings; once again I have to bring up 'my' new discovery, Meg Rosoff and the stunning Just In Case. Also Iain Banks's second novel, Walking On Glass.

But my very favourite ending ever has to be in Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are:

[SPOILER ALERT]

;-) "And it was still hot."

Well, yes, we are certainly all different in our tastes; I believe I am the only one on this forum who actually liked Fowles' "The Magus" (second version preferred).

I thought "The Thirteenth Tale" rather wimpy towards the end. And IMO, "The Chimes" was a prime example of an auspicious beginning which petered out to nothing.

As for good endings and consistency, I would nominate both "Lord of the Flies" and "The Road." Also "My Cousin Rachel " and A. Fournier's "The Wanderer." I like a bit of mystery and ambiguity, often.

I loved The Handmaid's Tale but I thought the last chapter was completely superfluous.

A recent read is Grace Notes by Bernard Mac Laverty, which I thought was marvellous in the first half, but petered out somewhat pretentiously in the second half.

I loved Roger Ackroyd personally, and consider it her masterpiece.

Fatherland by Robert Harris - a marvellous book, badly let down by a weak ending.

The first time I read The Grapes of Wrath, I really hated the ending; but I read it more recently, and now I think it's marvellous.

On the second reading with my group (expecting great disappointment from them at the last third of 'The Poisonwood Bible') I was surprised at myself and delighted to discover that it finally all made sense linking up closely with current events this year.
I found McEwan's 'The Child in Time' and'Atonement' a terrible cheat really - having been engossed so far and then so badly let down by the 'mills and boon' endings.

The first that comes to mind is The Cell by Stephen King.

I may return with other titles LOL!

Pat

Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer struck me as her preachiest and the ending as a definite let down.

An ending I really liked was Eye of the Needle, the first book I read by Ken Follett. Very satisfying.

I agree about HANDMAID'S TALE. William Wharton's BIRDIE also wimps out, IMO.

Brenda

I seem to recall that Birdie was one of those rare instances where the film version was a real improvement, Brenda!

Another book with an annoying add-on at the end is Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, there's that small 'happy' ending which just doesn't fit. It's so very much at the end of the novel though that it doesn't spoil it, just irritates.

I loved The Handmaid's Tale and its ending both.

For really good book with really weak ending, I would nominate Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. It seemed as though the last few chapters of the book had been chopped off, and the ending of a completely different book slapped on, characters' names changed to match the first book. It was that abrupt, and keenly disappointing to me. Until that point I had been thinking I might have found a new favorite author.

Yes! YEAR OF WONDERS ended really strangely, as if the author could think of no good way out of the box she had trapped the characters in. It reminded me of the peculiar ending of the movie YENTL, which seemed to have been borrowed from FUNNY GIRL. However, Brooks's MARCH ended in the most perfect way possible, so I can forgive her.

Brenda

I agree about Year of Wonders although I liked it well enough.

Oh my, yes, I had completely forgotten about Year of Wonders -- that would be on my top (bottom) ten of worst endings. Yikes! I can't remember the ending of March and it hasn't been that long ago that I read it.

My sister-in-law says the ending of Cold Mountain appalled her. I know what she means but somehow the ending fit the rest of the story, in my opinion; does anyone else think so?

Carolyn, yes! Eye of the Needle ended just the way it should've. I really like that whole book, and it was my first Follett also. Too bad I haven't liked any of his others nearly as well. It happens to me a lot though: I will like the first book I've read by a writer and I want all the subsequent ones to be just as good, though they seldom are.

The Birth of Venus was another that I liked but thought made some strange turns at the end. It is probably sacrilege to say so, but I also think the 4th Harry Potter, The Goblet of Fire took a wrong turn about half way through when the novel became a narration.

MARCH ended by splicing perfectly into LITTLE WOMEN, with Mr. March returning to the bosom of his family. It is quite nice, how the entire book works into the cracks and crevices of LITTLE WOMEN.

Brenda

Brenda, you spurred my memory. I think I forgot the ending of March because it didn't seem so much like an ending as it did a segue. Brooks's story is an interesting one although it really wasn't what I wanted the characters of the father and Marmee to be. That's the trouble a lot of the time for me, though, when I read another writer's interpretation of familiar and well-loved characters and it doesn't fit my notion. However, Louisa May herself didn't always please me with the developments of the March family in follow-up books. Truth is, when I first read Little Women, I wasn't keen on Jo marrying Mr. Bhaer.

Maybe you can answer this question for me too: Was "Marmee" the character's actual given name instead of the daughters' affectionate nickname for their mother -- perhaps an endearing childish rendition of mommy or mummie that stuck? I had always thought so, but Brooks refers to her throughout the story as "Marmee," even supposedly before she was a mother. Or did I miss something? And the father's name, Peter, where did that come from? I would never have taken the father as a "Peter" and, to me, it sounds more like Brooks's own notion than that of Alcott.

I cannot recall Mr. March's given name at all, in either Brooks or Alcott. (Of course it was an historical era in which you could call men by their last name even if you were married to them, like Mr. Bennett.) Marmee's baptismal name was Margaret, but apparently the nickname was applied very early in her life and nobody calls her anything but Marmee. However little Meg is named after her. Jo is obviously named after grouchy old Aunt March. Who are Beth and Amy called after?

What I enjoyed about MR. MARCH was the delving into Marmee's fiery character. In LITTLE WOMEN she depicted as so good it's rather depressing. She is far more interesting in Brooks.

Brenda

I thought Mr. Alcott's name was Bronson.

Brenda, I see your point about Marmee being a sort of "goody two shoes". Yet there are hints in "Little Women" that she once had a temper like Jo's. (I seem to recall a heart to heart chat with Jo, after the near debacle with Amy on the ice, in which Marmee tells Jo that she used to have a very bad temper, also, but that she had learned to control it by the help of her husband, over the years).

All these high dramatic developments are on stage in MR. MARCH, far more interesting than hearing Marmee tell Jo about it later in life. I found Marmee in LITTLE WOMEN rather nerve-wracking, but it would be fun to go to dinner with the Marmee in the Brooks novel. (You can have Mr. March in either case, however. He is probably a wiser and more worthwhile person after the war.)

Brenda

Thanks, Brenda! I never picked up on "Marmee" being a nickname for Margaret. Essentially, then, the daughters were calling their mother by her nickname and not their personal diminutive of mother. That would indicate, I think, Marmee's feminist sympathies; or is that reading too much into it?

Mary, Louisa M. Alcott's own father was named Amos Bronson Alcott, but in her books I'm not sure if she ever gave Mr. March a first name. That's why I was surprised when Brooks called him "Peter."

Doing a bit of online research I ran across the real names of the Alcott family that the Marches were patterned after:

- The mother was Abigail "Abba" May. I wonder if the Alcott daughters called their mother "Abba."
- The oldest daughter was Anna. I can't guess how this jumped to "Meg" except Meg is a nickname for Margaret, the given name shared by mother and daughter.
- Louisa was the second daughter. Perhaps she liked the semi-masculine shortening of Josephine, "Jo," because she thought of herself as the tomboy of the family.
- Elizabeth, called "Lizzie," was daughter number three. In Little Women the diminutive was changed to "Beth."
- May was the youngest. It's easy enough to figure out how Louisa gave her the name "Amy" in Little Women.

I knew all of the above once upon a time, as a kid, when I read Invincible Louisa by Cornelia Meigs.

Marmee got on my nerves, too, in LW, but I'm not sure I liked her any better in March. Maybe the woman in Brooks's novel could have turned into the paragon depicted in LW but it doesn't seem very realistic, to me.

There was another book that came out in the last few years that was also based on Little Women; but as I didn't like it I never finished it and now I can't remember the title.