Looking for a story, preferably about a woman who did her best and gave her all on life, but ends up with nothing. One where she just accepts that maybe there's nothing she has to like about herself, and that she doesn't have to do her best to be loved by anyone, despite her genuinely enjoying helping and being there for others. Something like Sarah James' story from The Maxx.
I like all kinds of literature from hard scifi to gothic and romance. I just want to explore the possibility that life can suck and then just end. That there doesn't have to be a redeeming arc. If youre a fan of Wandering Earth, something like that without the big, victorious ending. Something that ends in contentedness or quiet. Or a deep realization about what it means to be alive, human, or the nature of reality/the situation itself (even if it's not realistic, like the end of Hyperion or Nosferatu). Bonus points if there's an avoidant person/goal/object.
It doesn't have to be a literal translation of these criteria. It can also be allegorical. Something about acceptance instead of blazing glory, or neither a successful nor painful revenge element. Just acceptance, even if its sad or melancholic or angry. I liked the end of the Poppy War trilogy, for example. And We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
Thank you.
by Bravadette
2 Comments
Just read _The Wall_ by Marlen Haushofer and it may fit the bill. It’s about a woman who goes on vacation with some friends to a cabin the Austrian Alps, her friends don’t return from town and the woman finds that an invisible wall has trapped her in the region and she’s left alone with her dog and a cat and the story is just about her surviving in the woods, caring for her animals, hunting and farming and coming to terms with the fact that her life from here on out will be nothing but working to survive.
In How to Break a Girl by Amanda Sung, I wouldn’t say the characters, three Asian women who are BFFs, see their endings as hopelessness per se, but there is certainly a lot of nothingness.
One character spends years in a situationship with a man, who is just never going to love her. She accepts it.
Another character moves across continents for her husband, who ends up running her over with a car and leaving her to bleed on the pavement.
The third character experiences multiple encounters of sexual assault, different predators, too, but never ever gets a shred of justice. She also accepts it.
I won’t spoil more now, but while there is a lot of pain, trauma, you name it, there is even more resilience. The protagonists, so deeply flawed, yet incredibly strong, don’t just survive at the end. They thrive.
If you do decide to give it a try, please let me know. I’d love to discuss!