Just finished "Night Film"

[SheilaT]

by Marisha Pessi.

It ended up being a disappointment. I'm going to try to post without plot spoilers. It's more or less a mystery. A young woman, daughter of a very strange and reclusive film-maker, commits suicide. The narrator of the book, an investigative reporter, starts investigating. There's a lot of quasi interactive stuff, pages supposedly gotten off the internet, and that's quite well done. During the first three quarters of the book the mystery builds, complications ensue.

But then, it just doesn't work for me. The apparent solution to the base mystery comes about 20 pages from the end, then more information is revealed. The last couple of paragraphs left me furious, because it ends as the reclusive film-maker's movies end, with nothing actually resolved, and things left open.

I am not sure I'm willing to read another book by this author. Which is a shame, because all the way up to the last fifty pages or so (when things get really weird), I was being very impressed. I'm someone who tries to write, and plotting is by far my weakest skill, and so I was in awe of the plotting that was going on. But, but, I was left entirely dissatisfied with the outcome. Even though I get it that the ambiguity of the ending was intended.

Maybe the problem is me, that I want things neatly tied up, and that's not what modern novels do.

I'd be very interested in hearing what others who've read this book thought.

[Curmudgeoness]

1. Although I have not read this book, I understand

about how you want things tied up in the end. This is why I read one Anne Rice book and swore I would never waste my time with another of her books. I also just finished reading Joseph Wambaugh's first book, "The Blue Knight", and I am furious at the ending. I need resolution.

[SheilaT]

2. It seems to me that more and more

books have problem endings. Or very flimsy plots.

I recently read a novel that again, was quite good for the first two-thirds or so. A family had disappeared and our hero was trying to find them. In the end, what caused the disappearance was the existence of a photograph of someone else, someone with a past to hide. So he goes and wipes out the person that had seen the photo, as well as her husband and kids. But there was no way she could have known the real identity of the man in the photo, so I was very unsatisfied with that. Although the very end has something good happen, but it didn't make up for my not being willing to buy the underlying premise of the events.

Another currently popular kind of novel that makes me crazy is having someone behave as a modern day detective in some earlier era. I like the characters in a historical novel feel as if they really live in that time, not modern people dressed up in old clothes.