I recently finished reading the (relatively) new Faction Paradox novel "Newton's Sleep" by Daniel O'Mahony and while I was very pleased with it on the whole, I found the ending to be a little bit disappointing. It's not that it wasn't a great ending - it pulled off the job rather well and actually brought tears to my eyes - but the fact of the matter is that that's all it was: a good ending. It was good at being an ending. Change the names and a few of the specific details and you could tack it on to a whole array of books out there and it would still be a good ending.
From a literary perspective, though, the closure it brought had little to do with the rest of the story, and it didn't have any real information that wasn't revealed elsewhere in the book. It didn't serve a purpose. This would be okay, if it weren't for the fact that I was expecting and anticipating an ending that would have, and something slightly different and drastically less significant happened instead in a way that made it feel tacked on.
The following events that occur within the book are relevant to how I would change the ending, were I capable of doing so. I wouldn't consider them as spoilers, though some might, so read on at your own risk.
1) Early on in the story, the main character (Nathaniel Silver) is having bad dreams where, while crossing a bridge over the Thames, he throws his two most prized possessions into the river on a whim - An egg shaped object that he has had for several years, and a book of observations that he's been writing.
2) Over the course of the story, little by little, the Egg shaped object stops having the meaning that he originally attributed to it during the period when he was having those dreams. It stops being about his ambitions and starts being about the plans that other people have for him.
3) Nearing the end of the story, he is presented with the last remaining copy of his book, now crumbling into pieces. The person who shows it to him then sets it on fire and lets it burn in an attempt to convey the message that that portion of Silver's life is finally over and he needs to be on the verge of starting something completely new.
4) Even nearer the end, he is reunited with the egg shaped object yet again. He picks this up, along with a weapon that has featured throughout the story, but has been left unattended, and stows them in his pocket.
5) At the very end (before the final chapter that I find offense with) He's crossing a bridge over the Thames, and stops to toss the weapon in.
If you've read this far, I think that you can see where I'm going with this.
My ending involves changing item number 3 so that the book is given to him rather than burned, but the person giving it does so with a speech which transforms it symbolically from being something that Silver's ambitions revolved around into being something that someone else's ambitions for him revolve around. Then item number 5 could instead involve him throwing both the egg and the book into the Thames, just as he dreaded at the beginning of the story, but here instead of it being an abandonment of his own ambitions, it's a shrugging off of those placed upon him by others and a return to his true self.
The ending would be foreshadowed, it would have dramatic irony, and it wouldn't need the last chapter to give it a sense of completion - it would end simply and beautifully of its own merit.
But the question is, if it's so obvious to me, why didn't the author - clearly a highly skilled writer himself - see it there? I'm stuck questioning if there's something in the final few chapters of the story, or perhaps even elsewhere within the book that I somehow managed to miss which makes the ending we're presented with tie in better. If there is something that I've missed or misunderstood, please let me know.
