I'm Thinking Of Ending Things
May 07, 2022
“In this deeply suspenseful and irresistibly unnerving debut novel, a man and his girlfriend are on their way to a secluded farm. When the two take an unexpected detour, she is left stranded in a deserted high school, wondering if there is any escape at all. What follows is a twisted unraveling that will haunt you long after the last page is turned.”
I don’t remember how I found this book. I think it would have been when I was scouring social media for book recommendations, specifically horror. It might have come up in the “horror” recommendations on Goodreads or StoryGraph.
It was a while between me learning about the book/downloading it to my Nook, and actually reading it. At least three months, but probably closer to five. So, I didn’t even remember what it was about by the time I read it, and I therefore didn’t have many expectations. I think that’s a good thing. I like that this book caught me off guard. If I had set expectations, I probably would have been disappointed.
The first thing I noticed about the writing was the short sentences. There isn’t a lot of variation in sentence length, at least towards the beginning of the book. Some reviews I’ve read say that’s to build tension or suspense, but I think that’s just the author’s style. The narration is very stream-of-consciousness. I wasn’t the biggest fan to start out with, but it didn’t make the story exceptionally hard to read, and it grew on me.
The second thing I noticed was the dialogue. The majority of the story is just two characters talking to each other in a car. The fact that the story was mostly dialogue didn’t bother me, but the content of the dialogue did. They don’t talk like real people. Without knowing the rest of the story, it just seemed very pretentious. Like the author was trying too hard to make a statement about their personal philosophy, or like they couldn’t conceptualize a relationship without a manic-pixie-dream-girl type dynamic. Then I reached the ending, and it made sense. I didn’t like that form of storytelling, but I feel it was the best way to go about it.
The writing style reminded me of a story I would write. Actually, a specific story I had already written. It was really a Recognizing Myself Through Someone Else moment, and I don’t think I’ve ever really experienced that. It’s a good feeling.
We don’t get a lot of description of the narrator, for plot reasons. It’s something that occurred to me a few times throughout the book. But it’s like the story recognizes that, and it guides you away from that line of thinking. I might be a bit biased, though. Jake reminds me of someone I know in real life, so I thought all his digressions were sweet. Again, I really felt myself in the narrator’s shoes when she described all his small tics and habits.
I think the author did a really good job in conveying that something wasn’t quite right with the characters. A lot of times when I’m interacting with dialogue-heavy media, I have to ask myself, am I reading this as weird because I’m autistic and I, personally, wouldn’t act like this, or was this actually intended to come off as weird? And, sure, the narrator literally says This is weird at one point (maybe multiple points), but it’s like. I could tell. And I think that’s noteworthy.
And also, with the dialogue I mentioned earlier, there’s a subtle but noticeable shift from “the author just writes stilted dialogue” to “something is definitely not right here, but I can’t pin down exactly what.” It really helped to build suspense.
There isn’t much to say in terms of worldbuilding because the world, intentionally, is quite small. Cyclical.
There were times I got hung up on the dialogue and I wondered if it was because of regional or dialectical variations, but the book doesn’t tell you where it’s set. The dialogue reads like someone caught up in their own head, if you get me. It suits the story quite well.
The book is quite on-the-nose about its themes. It asks lots of questions about community, loneliness and fulfillment. Is it better to see the pain, but not know why? Would it hurt less if we did? Lots of what-ifs in regards to regret, but also, what if that were me? Could that be me? Would I see it coming? Could I stop it, could anyone?
I think it’s understandable why I thought this book was pretentious, unloading all that right at the start. But it fleshes those out very well
Overall, I really enjoyed the book. When I finished it, my hands were shaking and there were tears in my eyes. That’s how I know it’s good.
Seriously, though. I love the way it raises questions and then answers them, just not in the way you expect. Like doing a math problem LMAO.
About characters: I saw a review that said “the main character had multiple personality disorder.” That irritated me a bit, honestly. Maybe because I saw my own writing in the author’s work. How do you miss the point THAT badly. The point, as I understood it, wasn’t just that the main character was mentally ill. These elaborate personas he created (in his imagination! purposefully!) weren’t meant to be reflections of himself. He asked a question, and he was looking for an answer. He tried to find a justification through someone else’s point of view. He didn’t think he was those people, at least not in the literal sense. They were separate from each other and he knew it. It just seems like an over-simplification to say “the main character had multiple personality disorder.” The shallowest interpretation of both the book AND the mental disorder. Seriously, people who still call it MPD don’t know the first thing about it anyways.
About themes: One thing that stood out to me was our unknown speakers reviewing Jake’s condition. They say something to the effect of, “We can’t understand people like that. They’re not like us.” The obvious implication is “we’ll never become like them” or “they were never like us to begin with.” This is something that hits close, especially about mental illness. I have generally been described as high-functioning throughout my life, so everyone acted like it was totally out of the blue when my mental health took a nosedive. And then when I got better, they acted like it was all over now, like it was some chapter of my life that was permanently in the past. But I’m the same person now that I was then; I could just as easily end up there again. Jake’s employer could just as easily find their reality shattered with all the answers just out of reach. It always runs deeper than we think. There’s a lot to be said about identifying and dealing with these issues, especially when it comes to hereditary illnesses.
Spoiler stuff below.