Some of our favorite novels have ambiguous endings, or fail to wrap up events in the tidiest manner. Tana French’s debut novel, In the Woods, caused a stir when it was released, because a key question about the detective-narrator remains unanswered at the end. Other novels have morally ambiguous protagonists or dip into gray areas. We’re not supposed to root for Tom Ripley, but we kinda do. Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone doesn’t provide any easy answers about its characters, who cook meth as a way of escaping desperate poverty in the Ozarks, and do worse along the way to protect their way of life.
In an interview with Lit Hub‘s Reading Women podcast, Paula Hawkins (The Girl on the Train, A Slow Fire Burning) says a great mystery can be crafted without clear cut answers, but by examining the gray areas in questions about justice, revenge, and forgiveness. While many read mysteries to see the triumph good and the punishment of evil, Hawkins says there’s a lot to see in between. There might be no villain or many. A character might find healing through revenge, rather than reconciliation, or vice versa.
A lot of our favorite books would agree.
