Review: The novel is dark and scary and brutal. The scenes of war are graphic. In the end there is a spark of hope for Ambrose.

Let’s talk about endings.

Every story has to go somewhere.

Every story has “The End” attached.

Or does it.

So many writers feel as if they need to tidy everything up at end of a book and make sure there are no loose ends hanging around.

They want to take a long trip and leave their car in the garage when their travels are done.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

It’s probably the best way to write.

I know it’s the safest way to write.

However, I have long been influenced by the works of Ernest Hemingway.

I don’t always like his stories.

But I do love the way he puts them together.

Hemingway was once talking about wrapping up a story, and I never forgot his words.

He said: It was a very simple story called “Out of Season” and I had omitted the real end of it which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything if you knew that you omitted and the omitted part would strengthen the story and make people feel something more than they understood.

I thought it was genius.

That was his secret: Make people feel something more than they understood.

Hemingway didn’t particularly park his car in the driveway when his travels were over.

He parked it beside a long open road.

Was the journey finished?

Maybe.

Were there still miles to go?

Maybe.

Hemingway allowed the reader to become part of the story.

He triggered a reader’s imagination.

And the reader could write his or her own ending.

I try to do that when I write my own novels.

For example, when I wrote Night Side of Dark, these were my final paragraphs:

He waited until the painting, the Night Side of Dark, once described as the world’s most valuable piece of art, turned an ashen gray and scattered like dust and powder into the cinders, then he crawled with Devra through the broken window and dropped into the snow.

It was cold against his fevered skin.

As he stood, Lincoln allowed himself one final glance back into the room.

The Night Side of Dark had become as dark as a night that had no ending and no beginning, and Lincoln was like the night. If morning came, it would be a miracle.

For me, at that moment, there was nothing left to say.

There was nothing left to right.

Did Lincoln survive?

Did the Germans find him?

Did he escape a war-torn city?

Where did he go?

And did the girl go with him?

Or was he abandoned in the snow?

I wrote what I could.

I’ll let the writer crawl into his or her own imagination and write the rest.

Then again, maybe they will simply wait for the sequel.

If it stars Ambrose Lincoln, he made it.

Please click HERE to find Night Side of Dark on Amazon.