On Happy Endings
It's about the journey, not the destination
Whenever I tell someone that I read a lot of romance, I usually get one of two responses. Either they’re a fellow romance reader, in which case I immediately plunge into comparing favorites and plotting how to make them my friend. Or they’re not, and they ask why it doesn’t bother me that I already know how the book is going to end.
The answer I most frequently give is that one of the great joys of romance is not just reading a gloriously happy epilogue but seeing how the characters get there. At its best, romance is a dazzling high-wire act that has my heart in my throat as I turn the pages, convinced that these two people belong together but unsure how they can be. Maybe their families have been locked in a decades-long feud and one of them broke the other’s heart years ago. Maybe one of them left her small town as soon as she possibly could and the other has a daughter and a bookstore rooting her there. Or maybe they’re human and messy and complicated and they just haven’t learned the right way to talk to each other yet. Romance captures its characters at a moment of change and I love experiencing that moment alongside them.
Sometimes, I tell them that a romance without a happy ending would be like a mystery where you never find out who did it. I often think about romance and mystery in conversation with each other, as genre fiction that comes in a vast array of flavors and abides by certain conventions. At the end of a mystery, the crime will be solved. At the end of a romance, the central couple will be happy together. In both, a sense of order is restored. Justice is served. (Often in romance as well as mystery.) Broken things are repaired and some little part of the world comes back into harmony.
I also think there’s something quietly radical about romance’s insistence on a happy ending, in a world that can sometimes feel deeply cynical. Romance says that we can work through it, that healing is possible. It promises that a happy ending is still possible, if you’re willing to earn it. Especially for marginalized communities whose pain is often a more popular fictional subject than their joy, a happy ending can be deeply powerful and I fundamentally believe in its importance. Happy endings aren’t always possible in life or in fiction but when they do come along, I think we ought to savor every last bit of them.
Currently reading: My Booker-centric package of books from Blackwell’s finally came and I started with Pearl by Sian Hughes. So far, I’m loving the way it reflects on grief and how it incorporates myth and folk tales.
What’s bringing me joy lately:
I’m upstate for the weekend! (Hence the late newsletter, as getting up here was a bit of an odyssey.) But I’m writing this on a screened-in porch by a pond and have plans to admire some prize-winning quilts and buy heaps of beautiful tomatoes later.
This most recent season of The Bachelorette, which had the best finale I’ve seen in years? I watched with a friend and we were both cheering for the final couple so hard.
Finding a new cafe to write in on the weekends. I’ve been trying to get out of my house to write more and I think I may have found the ideal spot: within a twenty-minute walk, not too noisy or crowded, and selling a strong iced tea.
I’ve never been able to articulate this as well as you have in this newsletter but a resounding YES! The best part of a romance is how hopeful it is. It’s nice to have a happy ending in sight when I’m busy with work or chores or life drudgery. And you hit the nail on the head about the how so much written about marginalized communities / people is about their pain. That hit home. I can’t wait to respond in a similar way next time someone asks me this question!
Katherine Center has the most lovely author’s note at the end of Hello, Stranger that discusses a similar thing. I think she refers to it as calling it delicious anticipation instead of predictability. :)