Abraham del Court and his wife Maria de Kaersgieter (detail), 1654
Bartholomeus van der Helst

Here are a couple of thoughts on novel endings:  Several years ago, the show Six Feet Under, concluded the series by showing the deaths of all the main characters.  It was the only ending for a show about a funeral home that began each episode with a death (or deaths), and it’s brilliant because, well, in the narrative and larger sense, death is the end of the line.  

But every novel cannot end with, “So, everybody died.”  If you, the writer, did that you would find yourself in possession of the sort of reputation that few writers really want:  You will be the predictable writer.  You will be the, if-you’ve-read-one-you’ve-read-them-all writer.

A perfect ending is one that is both complete and yet open.  It’s an ending/not an ending.  Everyone will one day die, but not right now.  

Many readers have the experience of reading a novel that begins so promising, becomes great, then goes into decline somewhere around the three-quarter mark, finally grinding to a ham-handed halt.  How could this happen, cries the reader?

This is my theory.  I once read where Cezanne said the hardest thing to paint was the human hand.  The ending of a novel is the writer’s human hand.  It’s just so hard to paint.