Exercise in the over-dramatic arts Or, Monday morning venting is so much fun

When I finished Cold Mountain I was thisclose to writing the author and giving him a piece of my mind, mostly to the tune of it was completely pointless for Inman to die. I saw the movie first, and so as I was going through the book I’m like, well books are always better than movies. I’m sure they just killed off Jude Law in the movie to make it more dramatic. And I kept thinking and hoping that all through the book. But no. I mean, the jacket describes the book as “Inman’s odyssey,” so we’re saying Inman is the hero. And the book is written well enough so that you grow a reasonable attachment to the characters that you don’t want them harmed. And the way he dies is so pointless. It’s about as dramatic as if he had a heart attack in his sleep. He might as well have had Inman and Ada share some time together, you knew they were going to be happy together and that the bitterness of the war would only have made their relationship stronger. It would have been just as easy to keep him alive as to kill him off, and for the sake of all of us softies out there, keeping him alive would have made for a more satisfactory read. Or does it make it more literary and highbrow to kill him off? Whoo. That’s better. Want to vent about a book you hated the ending to? I’m listening.

Book in which you know the ending, anyone?