Favorite Last Line in a Book

[Maithanet]

This was inspired by Francis Buck in The Road thread, who posted this, which I agree is excellent

The Road:

"Once there were brook trouts in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

My personal favorite is from between Jake and Lady Brett Ashley in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises:

“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.”

Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.

“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

If you haven't read the book, it doesn't have quite the same impact, but it captures the melancholy of the two main characters beautifully.

So, which books really finish with a bang? What is the ending prose that really stuck with you?

[sanidaus]

Best ending to any book: 1984.

"Everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

Now, I may not like the ending, but it is one hell of a finish and I have yet to read a book with a more powerful end.

[kingofashes]

Great idea for a thread but generally the ending of a book doesn't stay with me. Even if I loved a book, it's pretty rare for the end to be a part I enjoy (maybe because the book is ending)

But Paul Auster is one author that stands out for me. He is great at writting really bittersweet endings. I'll post one later on when I have time and have a think about it.

Looking forward to seeing what people post though.

[Spockydog]

"The fire roared. Smoke rose through the falling rain, carrying the body of Otah Machi with it. And pale petals of almond blossoms floated over the crowd and the pyre, the palaces and the city, like the announcement that spring had come at last."

Daniel Abraham, The Price of Spring.

[MinDonner]

In my experience, it's pretty rare for a book to end with just one punchy last line, at least compared with short stories (where such things are de rigeur and of which I thoroughly approve). That said, there's at least one or two that stand out in my memory. Notably, either Good Omens or Sourcery by Pratchett (they are kinda similar in structure) which end with "There would always be another morning." - a really nice way to indicate that (spoiler!) the End of the World has been averted.

And there's also "'You used what?'" as the last line of Brookmyre's Be My Enemy, which is very funny if you've actually read the book...

[Opisthokont]

Arthur C Clarke, The City and the Stars.

In this universe the night was falling; the shadows were lengthening toward an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered; and along the path he once had followed, Man would one day go again.

[Fez]

The last lines in books usually don't leave much of an impression with me since the final plot lines have almost always wrapped up a page or two before (or sometimes even an entire chapter before) and my interest has waned. The exceptions, naturally, are when the plot isn't resolved until the very end. The one that stuck with me a lot longer than usual is the end of Iain M. Banks' Matter. And I'm putting in spoiler tags since it is the plot's resolution itself.

She had seen all she needed to see, heard all she needed to hear.

go

Now she was close enough

and

(This was all she had, and the worst of it was, backups or not, she'd never know if it was going to be enough.)

fuck yourself, Djan Seriy Anaplian said finally.

She let the containment within the little anti-matter reactor inside her head go.

Now technically that's not the very end. Buried inside the Appendix (after the glossery and a bunch of other stuff) there is a 3-page epilogue which I didn't even realize existed for the longest time. I've never read it either, I don't to potentially dilute the impact the ending had.

[Datepalm]

Orwell came to mind as well, with the end of Homage to Catalonia:

Down here it was still the England I had known in

my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep

meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the

slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms,

the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful

wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar

streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the

men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the

blue policemen--all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which

I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it

by the roar of bombs.

And One Hundred Years of Solitude:

Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment

when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.

[TrackerNeil]

From The Godfather:

Then with a profound and deeply willed desire to believe, to be heard, as she had done every day since the murder of Carlo Rizzi, she said the necessary prayers for the soul of Michael Corleone.

[Francis Buck]

The ending to Shogun (super spoilers if you haven't read it).

It's actually more like the whole last two pages, where the realization dawns on you (or at least me) that Toranaga has been planning to become Shogun the entire time, and how obvious it is in retrospect. I'd post it, but I don't have the book on me.

[Ravenhair]

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Hell, the entire last page should count.

[Sci-2]

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Hell, the entire last page should count.

+1

eta: Also the Matter one was is good. Fez, I don't recall the epilogue marginalizing the significance of the ending.

[RedEyedGhost]

I am Legend by Richard Matheson

Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept came, amusing to him even in his pain.

A coughing chuckle filled his throat. He turned and leaned against the wall while he swallowed the pills. Full circle, he thought while the final lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever.

I am legend.

[matt b]

From The Wizard by Gene Wolfe: "Do not worry about me. I am fine."

[Maithanet]

I am Legend by Richard Matheson

That ending was fantastic. It helped that the book I was reading had a bunch of Matheson short stories afterwards, so I didn't know that the novel was about to end. It had quite an impact.

Best ending to any book: 1984.

"Everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

Now, I may not like the ending, but it is one hell of a finish and I have yet to read a book with a more powerful end.

But could that story really have had any other ending? We all love Big Brother in the end.

[Larry of the Lawn]

And One Hundred Years of Solitude:

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby. Hell, the entire last page should count.

Booyah! Those were the first two that came to mind.

White Noise, Don DeLillo - "The cults of the famous and the dead." Doesn't really stand on its own, and isn't a complete sentence, but in the context of the page long final paragraph it is awesomely final.

edit: its its its its it's

[cseresz.reborn]

He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.

[Samsaptakas]

The wind rose high and free, to soar in an open sky with no clouds. It passed over a broken landscape scattered with corpses not yet buried. A landscape covered, at the same time, with celebrations. It tickled the branches of trees that had finally begun to put forth buds.

The wind blew southward, through knotted forests, over shimmering plains and toward lands unexplored. This wind, it was not the ending. There are no endings, and never will be endings, to the turning of the Wheel of Time.

But it was an ending.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

A Tale of Two Cities: "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

[Spockydog]

Where's my freakin' like button?