The Ending Writes Itself has so much potential, but sadly doesn’t seem interested in fulfilling much of it. Here’s the setup: a genre-spanning group of “midlist” writers is invited out to a mysterious retreat on a remote Scottish island by icon and best-selling mystery writer Arthur Fletch. But when they arrive, they learn the truth: Fletch has died, leaving the long-awaited finale to his most popular series unfinished! The writers have one long weekend to each take their best shot at supplying the missing ending. The winner will receive a cool $1m prize – and even better, a guaranteed three-book deal for their own work with Fletch’s publishing house.
Castle-like manor on a remote island, cut off from civilization until the clock runs out? Clearly we’re entering And Then There Were None territory here, and we’re probably going to get a little meta- with it and poke some fun at genre fiction tropes along the way, right? I’m in.
There are soooo many ways this could have been a sly, tongue-in-cheek sendup while still delivering a good locked room mystery at the heart of it all. For starters, The Ending Writes Itself is a collaboration between V.E. Schwab (love her London books!) and Cat Clark, billed as “by Evelyn Clarke”… and here on the island we’ve got a husband-and-wife team of crime fiction writers who publish together under the name Penn Stonely. Maybe they’ll act as surrogates, giving us a peek behind the curtain at the authors’ real-life collaborative process?
And I’m sure it’s no accident that none of the other guests are crime/mystery authors. Instead, we’ve got one from YA, one from sci-fi, one horror, and one… romance! Maybe every now and then, an excerpt from one of their drafts will be tucked in between the regular chapters? Even better if there’s no direct attribution – we’ll just infer it from the writing style. Art imitates life imitates art, so some of the clues as to what’s really going on – and some red herrings, too! – might be nestled in those notes. But even if you’re not reading every detail closely, they’ll still be fun as goodhearted genre send-ups – like listening to Arianna Grande’s impression of Brtiney Spears on the Tonight Show.
Well, no. In fact, for a book about a bunch of writers competing for the fulfillment of their career dreams, there’s very little ink spilled on the actual writing. About a third of the way through the book I was scratching my head because: the golden ticket is up for grabs, and everyone just sits around drinking tea and chatting with each other all day? And all night. Wouldn’t at least a couple of them be like, “Hey, good luck (not really), I’m gonna lock myself in my room now and write the shit out of this ending, see you all in 48hrs?” Apparently not.
Instead of writing, these writers mostly talk. But they do talk about writing! There is plenty of publishing industry inside baseball here, both in voiced dialog and internal monologues. And all of it basically boils down to 15 variations of, “this industry is a heartless, soulless exploitation of hopeful artists; it’s full of nepotism, sexism, and racism; it will chew you up, spit you out, and never look back. Also, AI will only make it worse.” Oookkkayyy? I’m glad you got that off your chest?
Meanwhile, the mystery itself takes forever to get going, and then turns out to be not so much a mystery after all, more like a mildly gory thriller. The build-up to the first murder is deliciously suspenseful, and seems to reveal just the right amount of almost-nothing… but after the second body drops, the brakes are suddenly cut. The book stops being a semi-cozy, locked-room mystery and shifts into high gear as a frenetic, multi-POV slasher chase scene; people start falling like dominoes without much rhyme or reason.
And then, before you know it, it’s all over. Oh, except for the epilogue! I’d like to say that was a clever twist, kind of a wink to the horror films where – just when you think it’s safe – the bony hand comes punching up out of the grave! But no. I think it may have been a bit of a meta-fiction joke: The Ending Writes Itself doesn’t have a proper ending, see? If that was the joke, though, it fell a little flat for me. Fitting, perhaps, but not quite enough to redeem things at this point.
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