Enough with the sad, sad, sad endings, already

I hereby admit that I am not good at the bleak, desolate endings. Even in books. Even in fiction.

I can appreciate complexity, a mix of trauma or tragedy in layers and textures. But throw me a little hope. Give me a sliver I can hang onto.

To the Novelist, I give you my time and, if you write well, my full attention for hundreds of pages. I enter your world, trusting you to take me through it and leave me with something, besides despair.

This morning, I finished a beautifully written book that was, in the end, so completely depressing and sad that I wondered if I should really be reading novels. Maybe I can't handle it. I have a hard time pulling a way from that world, removing myself from the reality I've agreed to follow. I feel robbed. Yes, I'm whining (sorry) and probably pathetic.)

I feel like a wimp. I feel naive. I feel like I may not have the heart or the stomach, the intestinal fortitude, to appreciate literature or the Apocalypse. Living can be scary enough.

Should everything be sugar-coated, all the loose ends tied up? Certainly not. But must it all end badly? Does art require that much suffering? (Or, could I possibly not obsess this much?)