In my previous post, I wrote about the first line or lines of a novel as being the portal into the story world, and how a captivating first line has the power to pull the reader out of the everyday world and into the dream state of the fictive one.
Last lines, too, have a power all their own … to sum up, in a single eloquent image or thought, all that has come before. To leave the reader satisfied, but somehow wishing the story would never end.
Having a plucked at random a few favourite novels from my bookshelf, I was surprised to see how many of them struck a similar note: elegiac, hopeful, full of portent for what might happen next, after the final words fade away.
“For, when he had gone perhaps a couple of hundred yards through the soaking bush he stopped, turned aside, and leaned against a tree on an ant-heap. And there he would remain, until his pursuers, in their turn, came to find him.” (The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing)
“Instead, he stood in cold and righteous silence in the summer’s dusk, watching her hurry along the shore, the sound of her difficult progress lost to the breaking of small waves, until she was a blurred, receding point against the immense straight road of shingle gleaming in the pallid light.” (On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan)
“I love the town. I think sometimes of going into the ground here as a last wild gesture of love — I too will smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence. I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful. I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep.” (Gilead by Marilynne Robinson)
“She settles in her chair by the window, to gaze out at the dusky blue of the hydrangeas. The avenue has gone shadowy, the outline of its trees stark against the sky. The rooks come down to scrabble in the grass as every evening at this time they do, her companions while she watches the fading of the day.” (The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor)
“The fantasy never got beyond that — I didn’t let it — and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing or out of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be.” (Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro)