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A review by paulabrandon
End of Story by Peter Abrahams
2.0
This was an almost book for me. It was almost good. The set-up was intriguing, but it just couldn't stick the landing. The last quarter is silly, unlikely, far-fetched, a bit confusing, and completely drags down the book. Getting there was fun, but the ending was so disappointing it just tainted everything that came before it.
Ivy Seidel is a struggling writer desperate for a short story to get published by The New York Times. Circumstances see her taking over the job of a writer friend who has just struck it big in Hollywood. The job is teaching writing to a handful of prison inmates. Ivy is particularly impressed by the work of one inmate, Evan Vance Harrow. She can't believe someone with his sort of background could be so naturally good at writing.
Ivy becomes a little obsessed, and learns that Vance is in prison for his involvement in a casino robbery where several people wound up dead. But through talking to many (many, many, many) people involved in the investigation and arrest, Ivy becomes convinced that Vance is innocent of the crime that got him incarcerated. Trying to prove his innocence gets her in over her head.
There's no doubt that this story kept me involved. Ivy likely needed to have her head examined over her obsession with proving Vance's innocence, but I was intrigued by the notion that a lot of it was driven by Ivy's jealousy that someone from an unprivileged, tough background could actually be a better writer than her, who had actually studied the form. And could she simply be attracted to the notion of the "bad boy" ideal? That undercurrent certainly kept me interested. Also, author Peter Abrahams has a simple, crisp style that conveys information succinctly.
However, it just didn't completely work as a whole! It got a bit repetitive, with Ivy meeting a neverending parade of people to question them either about Vance, or the casino robbery. The book often felt like it was in a bit of a holding pattern. It also stretched credibility that Ivy was not able to locate all these people so easily, but that all of them were completely willing and happy to talk to her, despite her flimsiest of cover stories.
That credibility gets stretched beyond breaking point in the last quarter of the book. The ending was also confusing. A bit of reflection after finishing the book, and some re-reading enabled me to mostly put it all together and figure out what everyone did and why, but some extra clarity would have been nice! This is a case where the dreaded "killer monologue" would have helped things a great deal!
I'm disappointed I can't give this more than 2 stars, since it's been a lacklustre reading year for me so far, and this really had promise. But this was too repetitive, a bit too slow-paced, and the home stretch just pushed credibility and believability way too far for me to be satisfied.
Ivy Seidel is a struggling writer desperate for a short story to get published by The New York Times. Circumstances see her taking over the job of a writer friend who has just struck it big in Hollywood. The job is teaching writing to a handful of prison inmates. Ivy is particularly impressed by the work of one inmate, Evan Vance Harrow. She can't believe someone with his sort of background could be so naturally good at writing.
Ivy becomes a little obsessed, and learns that Vance is in prison for his involvement in a casino robbery where several people wound up dead. But through talking to many (many, many, many) people involved in the investigation and arrest, Ivy becomes convinced that Vance is innocent of the crime that got him incarcerated. Trying to prove his innocence gets her in over her head.
There's no doubt that this story kept me involved. Ivy likely needed to have her head examined over her obsession with proving Vance's innocence, but I was intrigued by the notion that a lot of it was driven by Ivy's jealousy that someone from an unprivileged, tough background could actually be a better writer than her, who had actually studied the form. And could she simply be attracted to the notion of the "bad boy" ideal? That undercurrent certainly kept me interested. Also, author Peter Abrahams has a simple, crisp style that conveys information succinctly.
However, it just didn't completely work as a whole! It got a bit repetitive, with Ivy meeting a neverending parade of people to question them either about Vance, or the casino robbery. The book often felt like it was in a bit of a holding pattern. It also stretched credibility that Ivy was not able to locate all these people so easily, but that all of them were completely willing and happy to talk to her, despite her flimsiest of cover stories.
That credibility gets stretched beyond breaking point in the last quarter of the book.
Spoiler
Ivy is having sex with Vance in the prison hospital, and is then later breaking him out of said hospital by climbing into his room via a ladder and freeing him with bolt cutters, and not a single person noticing! What the actual fuck?!?I'm disappointed I can't give this more than 2 stars, since it's been a lacklustre reading year for me so far, and this really had promise. But this was too repetitive, a bit too slow-paced, and the home stretch just pushed credibility and believability way too far for me to be satisfied.