I'm Thinking of Ending Things

I'm thinking of ending things.

Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It dominates. There's not much I can do about it. Trust me. It doesn't go away. It's there whether I like it or not. It's there when I eat. When I go to bed. It's there when I sleep. It's there when I wake up. It's always there. Always.

Whenever I saw I'm Thinking of Ending Things at the bookstore, I thought that the title was about suicide (which didn't attract me), but when people kept saying that it's a wicked psychological thriller, I decided to pick it up. It was surprising (a relief?), therefore, when I started the book and it's immediately made clear that this is about someone “thinking about ending things” with her boyfriend. Ahhh. That's a different story all together. But as the couple proceed on a road trip in order to meet his parents, there's an uncanniness to everything that's said and done between them that makes for a tense and unsettling read. I don't want to spoil this book for anyone, so I'll just say that while the endpoint of this book wasn't wholly unexpected, the journey to get there was totally rewarding.

A memory is its own thing each time it's recalled. It's not absolute. Stories based on actual events often share more with fiction than fact. Both fictions and memories are recalled and retold. They're both forms of stories. Stories are the way we learn. Stories are how we understand each other. But reality happens only once.

Again, I don't want to spoil the book, so I'll just note my reading experience: Mallory was home from university this weekend, and she was hanging out with me while I read. When she asked what my book was about, I said there's a road trip where this girl (and it wasn't until I started talking about the girl that I realised her name is never given) is thinking about breaking up with her boyfriend, and as the drive goes on and on, she recalls some bizarre events in her life – a Peeping Tom who scared her as a child; an upsetting conversation with her mother's friend when she was young; a “Caller” who keeps dialing her cell phone and leaving the same strange message:

There's only one question to resolve. I'm scared. I feel a little crazy. I'm not lucid. The assumptions are right. I can feel my fear growing. Now is the time for the answer. Just one question. One question to answer.

In addition to the strange memories and the increasingly bizarre events of the present (and especially when the couple finally arrives at the rural farmhouse and meet the oddball parents), chapters are broken up by intermittent conversations by unknown persons who are discussing some tragedy:

–Was it...messy?
–You can imagine.
–I can.
–We shouldn't get into the details right now.
–I hear they found a breathing apparatus, a gas mask, near the body?
–Yes, but it was an old one. It's unclear if it still worked.
–There's so much we don't know about what really happened in there.
–And the only one who could tell us is gone.

There is this constant sense of danger – but of the uncanny, not necessarily violent sort – and throughout, the boyfriend Jake waxes philosophical on the nature of reality and the human experience; never quite directly answering his girlfriend's questions about his family or his past. I was reading a section out loud to Mal, and it wasn't until I did so that I realised how short and choppy the sentences in the book are:

Anyone can think anything. Thoughts are the only reality. It's true. I'm sure of it now. Thoughts are never faked or bluffed. This simple realization has stayed with me. It has bothered me for years and years. It still does.

This spareness of prose adds to the feeling of urgency, but it doesn't make for a perfect read aloud experience. Mallory went back to her own reading, and when I finished I'm Thinking of Ending Things, she asked, “Well, how does it end?” I told her and she wasn't overly impressed, and that's just the thing: I could summarise the plot of this book in four or five sentences, but that's not what it's about; it's the journey, not the destination, and I had a heck of a ride.