Joyce's "The Dead" also achieves a terrible/beautiful lyrical quality in the final passage.

Joyce makes me shake for a whole different reason.

I love the ending of the movie (don't know if it's in the book) Barry Lyndon.

Everybody's life has, one way or another, been destroyed. Then there's a voiceover with titles: (paraphrase) "Rich or poor, good or bad, lucky or unlucky, they are all equal now." Sent chills up my spine.

Joyce makes me shake for a whole different reason.

Are we talking about Molly Bloom now? checks notes...

Are we talking about Molly Bloom now?

Speaking of great endings....

I love the ending of the movie (don't know if it's in the book) Barry Lyndon.

Everybody's life has, one way or another, been destroyed. Then there's a voiceover with titles: (paraphrase) "Rich or poor, good or bad, lucky or unlucky, they are all equal now." Sent chills up my spine.

Terribly underrated movie (although one of Scorcese's favorites) and Michael Horden's narration was wonderful.

taps foot waiting for deb's inevitable Kubrick rant :)

I think my favorite ending is "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" because Flannery has had a dark and comic tone through the whole story, and that tone leads you to a place of spiritual revelation. Where the old woman and the Misfit (one a fussy, vain, shallow biddy, the other a stereotypical killer) are exposed to each other in a deeply human way. And the darkness, and the comedy and the violence are not misleads at all, but how you get to that humanity. And it encapsulates all that not only in a narrative moment, but in a highly quotable quote from one of the characters.

mmmmmm, Barry Lyndon.

Watership Down ends very well.

I'm gonna be all obvious and say I love the ending of The Lord of the Rings almost beyond the telling of it. How the story is wrapped up for all the characters, and how the ending is both happy and melancholy, how the loss they've all suffered is so real and takes such a toll, and yet there's also a real joy at the glory of the days to come.

For bad endings to good books... I really loved Zadie Smith's White Teeth up until the FutureMouse bit. Actually, that was even okay until it became clear that the culmination of the whole story was going to center around it; suddenly, what had seemed a relatively uninteresting subplot became The Whole Point. And I didn't get enough of a sense of resolution for any of the characters.

Also, have any of you read Norman Rush's Mating? It's a fascinating story, but the ending just trails off, IMO. Still very much worth reading, though.

My most memorable ending is the ending of Jack McDevitt's "A Talent for War," a book I pimp at every opportunity. His other books are well done, but this one is remarkable. It's an "oh shit" ending, but one that, when you look back, you can see all these bits of evidence. It's a puzzle on a grand scale that's being put together by the protagonists.

I also love the ending of Moby Dick: "It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan." In that case, I think it's because we start with Ishmael, alone, and end with him, alone, saved by mystical means to tell the tale.

In general, I like a book that takes a little time in wrapping up the ending. I've been irritated with many a mystery novel that basically ended with "Bob did it. The End."

Bob did it?! Jeez, ruin the ending for me, why don'tcha.

I like long wrapups too. Basically, I'm unsatisfied if I feel that the characters haven't gotten enough resolution. I don't need complete resolution, but I need to feel, in some way, that the story is over for the characters as well as for me.

Edit: uh, I guess that's stating the obvious. I like character arcs! Yay, character arcs!