Perfect Endings:

A few days ago I posted a list of great beginnings from several novels. Now here is a partial list of my favorite endings. Again, this was inspired by an assignment in my Prose Forms class.

(Woman, reading. Renoir c.1900, oil on canvas)

He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance. –Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)

...I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. –James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. –F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision. –Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)

"Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day." -Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind (1936)

She sat staring with her eyes shut, into his eyes, and felt as if she had finally got to the beginning of something she couldn’t begin, and she saw him moving farther and farther away, farther and farther into the darkness until he was the pin point of light. –Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood (1952)

The old man was dreaming about the lions. –Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Are there any questions? –Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1986)

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See if you can find your favorites on THIS list from American Book Review.

~~J