Compulsively readable but ultimately frustrating books

September 26, 2016 4:45 PM

As it says in the title, I'm looking for recommendations for books that you can't put down and read obsessively, but that leave you unsatisfied and frustrated once you finish it. The book that inspired this question was A Little Life, which I devoured in 2 days, but left me feeling manipulated and saying "wtf did I just read??" by the end. Other books that have evoked those feelings are The Bronze Horseman/Tatiana & Alexander trilogy, and basically anything by Jodi Picoult. I am not sure why I want to subject myself to more of these books but hopefully you all can help me frustrate myself even further!
posted by Neely O'Hara to Media & Arts (80 answers total)

Does it matter what caused the frustration at the end? I loved reading Infinite Jest - the writing was amazing! Right up until it ended abruptly.
posted by duoshao at 4:54 PM on September 26, 2016

The Magus by John Fowles.
Twists and turns and curls and bends and loop de loops and spins...ect. and an ending that frustrates. 'Manipulated' is the main theme.
posted by FallowKing at 4:54 PM on September 26, 2016

People have hated me for recommending Bel Canto by Ann Patchette for reasons I suspect would fit your request.
posted by thebrokedown at 5:00 PM on September 26, 2016

Ha, came in to say Infinite Jest as well and was trying to figure out how to say it without offending the literary universe...
posted by Mchelly at 5:02 PM on September 26, 2016

I was mad about the ending of All the Light We Cannot See, but I don't know if it was frustrating so much as it just felt like a big waste - but it's a book about a war so maybe that was the point? I got to the last 5 pages and wanted to throw the book across the room, if that helps...
posted by janepanic at 5:13 PM on September 26, 2016

I seem to remember that She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb being like that.

Also Goldfinch.
posted by Ftsqg at 5:13 PM on September 26, 2016

I think I'm in the minority on this one because it's gotten great reviews, but when I got done with We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, I wanted to throw it across the room. I just remember thinking, "Seriously????"
posted by bookmammal at 5:26 PM on September 26, 2016

Does it matter what caused the frustration at the end?

A crappy ending that comes out of nowhere is totally fine, but I think what I'm looking for even more is when an author draws you into an intensely detailed world that you get really wrapped up in, but once you're done and take a look back at the whole thing, you realize it was kind of all built on bullshit.
posted by Neely O'Hara at 5:27 PM on September 26, 2016

This is going to be unpopular, but the Girl on a Train. Spoilers, I know that the whole book is designed with a specific narrative--- however, at the end I thought it was just a piece of shite. Gimmicky to be gimmicky.
posted by Draccy at 5:29 PM on September 26, 2016

I actually did throw Larry Brown's Joe across the room when I finished it. Not because it was a bad book at all (I really like Brown's writing), but the end is just brutal and I hated the antagonist so damn much.
posted by Ufez Jones at 5:30 PM on September 26, 2016

I both loved and hated In the Woods by Tana French. I read it five or so years ago and it still frustrates me to think about.
posted by firei at 5:46 PM on September 26, 2016

The Glamour by Christopher Priest (who also wrote The Prestige). Beautifully written, but I did lend it to a friend specifically to annoy and frustrate him when he got to the end. I loved it though.
posted by bent back tulips at 5:51 PM on September 26, 2016

Agree that In the Woods by Tana French is the most frustrating book I've ever read. I couldn't put it down, and like firei, I think of it still, years later.
posted by Barnifer at 5:51 PM on September 26, 2016

when an author draws you into an intensely detailed world that you get really wrapped up in, but once you're done and take a look back at the whole thing, you realize it was kind of all built on bullshit.

I wasn't sure if I should suggest Ready Player One but on reading your comment, yeah, Ready Player One.
posted by GuyZero at 5:53 PM on September 26, 2016

"City of Glass" by Paul Auster.
posted by Charity Garfein at 6:04 PM on September 26, 2016

Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian starts out as an exciting, promising mystery, stalls mightily with what seems to be someone's unpublished PhD thesis jammed randomly into the middle, and ends with a wet fart.
posted by fingersandtoes at 6:16 PM on September 26, 2016

This is pretty much anything by China Mieville for me, and The City & the City especially. Such a fascinating setting with a mystery that seems to be leading to a massive conspiracy that just peters out.
posted by Tentacle of Trust at 6:20 PM on September 26, 2016

I haven't personally read it, but I think that Stephen King's Dark Tower series probably fits this criterion -- Stephen King's books tend to be very gripping, but many people felt that the series had a phenomenally unsatisfying ending.
posted by phoenixy at 6:21 PM on September 26, 2016

Personally, anything by Guy Gavriel Kay does this to me - Tigana not so much, but The Lion of A-Rassan irritated the bejusus out of me. I mean, the writing is fantastic and the story was great but when I'm done I tend to think "I just read a great re-telling of an actual historical event that would have been better as a plain historical event instead of bullshit world building".

I've no idea why it does this to me. And I apologise to the author - he's very good. It's a personal quirk, I guess.
posted by ninazer0 at 6:25 PM on September 26, 2016

M. M. Kaye's The Far Pavilions, which starts out as an incredibly detailed engrossing romance novel and just goes on... and on... and on... and then you realize that an annoying secondary character was actually the author's husband's great-great-uncle and it's just like, what? I pushed through the last hundred pages for this? Also, colonialism.

Edited to add: also, Dorothy Dunnett's Niccolo series, if you can push through the whole thing. The first book got me hooked... but by the last two books I was just skimming, and more than mildly infuriated by the authorial gymnastics required to make the whole thing make sense. Which it really didn't.
posted by posadnitsa at 6:28 PM on September 26, 2016

The Little Friend.

I feel compelled to note that reading annotations to Infinite Jest made me love it even more, and understand the arc of the plot better.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 6:41 PM on September 26, 2016

The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro. I'm surprised no one has said it yet! It will make you feel insane.
posted by something something at 6:45 PM on September 26, 2016

"A crappy ending that comes out of nowhere is totally fine."

Harry Potter
posted by Confess, Fletch at 6:50 PM on September 26, 2016

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
posted by Confess, Fletch at 6:52 PM on September 26, 2016

The Mirror Thief by Martin Seay.
posted by jmfitch at 7:00 PM on September 26, 2016

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and (arguably) most anything by Ayn Rand. A bit de gustibus but very readable and compelling. They’ll mess up your world view for at least a few days.

I’d second Auster’s City of Glass or any of the other books in the New York trilogy. Odd texts written in distant sentences. Raymond Chandler’s work - especially The Long Goodbye can leave you with a similar feeling of being trapped in some sort of story beyond your ken.

If comics are your thing, Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles is one heck of a massive WTF. I think I liked it, but it gets odd indeed.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:06 PM on September 26, 2016

I had this feeling about The Exorcist, back in the day. It terrified me while I was reading it, but afterwards I just felt gross.
posted by SLC Mom at 7:15 PM on September 26, 2016

Anything by Miranda July
posted by book 'em dano at 8:10 PM on September 26, 2016

The 3rd Policeman by Flann O'Brian. If you liked The Invisibles, read anything by Alan Moore or anything else by Grant Morrison.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 8:29 PM on September 26, 2016

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton - frustrating because of the very human decisions that the characters make, but amusing for all of the comments on American society that still ring true.
posted by koakuma at 8:31 PM on September 26, 2016

Especially based on your follow-up, each one of William Gibson's "Bigend trilogy." A more masterful deescalation of rising stakes has never been seen.
posted by praemunire at 8:56 PM on September 26, 2016

Many, many people have gotten very gripped by The Name of the Wind and it definitely qualifies as a book where every second of additional distance from actually reading it makes you more aware of what a heap of BS it is (an experience you can compound further by reading the second book! Or you can spare yourself. Your choice.)
posted by Cozybee at 8:59 PM on September 26, 2016

It might have just been because of my life circumstances when I read it but James Salter's Light Years. The Counterlife by Philip Roth ticked me off - though it's the only Roth I could finish. The Man Who Loved Children by the Aussie author Christina Stead is a dark one. Try Tana French as others mentioned.

Once again, these may reflect where my mind was when I read so YMMV.
posted by Lil Bit of Pepper at 9:19 PM on September 26, 2016

'The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta' by Mario Vargas Llosa is like this. The story starts off with a journalist researching the story of a communist rebel in Peru many years ago. After he creates this entrancing narrative web, the narrator stops somewhere around where the ending would be and tells the reader that the entire story is just made up, which is a kinda post-modern gesture about truth and politics. I just wanted to find out what happened.
posted by ovvl at 9:59 PM on September 26, 2016

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family (non-fiction, but it can easily be imagined to be fiction) is over-the-top absorbing, and just ends pretty much apropos of nothing and leaves one choking at the bit for more of the saga. Here's an infuriating Random Family: Ten Years On... brief author interview that just underscores how (obviously) the characters' lives kept going on, and she (obviously) stopped writing about them. I haven't been able to find any sort of 'Random Family -- A Look at the Lives, Fifteen Years After the Book's Publication' update. It received a lot of critical acclaim when it came out and I expect even a brief and superficial sequel (or documentary) would do extremely well, and yet. Bupkis.

It also made me crazy when the Dykes to Watch Out For series came to a rather abrupt end, with no "And Mo ended up moving to Canada, where she..." attempt at a wrap-up for addicts like me who had hoped to grow old with them.

(Looking at your comment I'm not totally sure 'books that were @#$*ing awesome and frustrating because they just stopped short and left you hanging' is quite the flavour of frustrating you are looking for here, though...? Apologies if I'm way off the mark.)
posted by kmennie at 10:04 PM on September 26, 2016

I'm in the minority on this, but that's how I felt about Gone Girl. The fact that the reviews were so good just added to the disappointment.
posted by she's not there at 10:51 PM on September 26, 2016

Atonement, by Ian McEwan. Not a bad ending, but a bit of a messed-with-your-head one.
posted by jojobobo at 12:27 AM on September 27, 2016

Oh and of course The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie,
posted by jojobobo at 12:28 AM on September 27, 2016

A crappy ending that comes out of nowhere: the elegance of a hedgehog.
posted by meijusa at 12:30 AM on September 27, 2016

Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco is specifically designed around the premise of "it turns out it all means nothing", although I'd be hard-pressed to call it compulsively readable. (I deeply love the book, but it's bloody hard work)
posted by parm at 12:34 AM on September 27, 2016

I got this feeling from a recent re-read of The Time Traveler's Wife, though more from a "these gender politics are gross/no 23-year-old has ever been that poised ever" kind of angle, both of which escaped me the first time I read it in my late teens.
posted by terretu at 12:51 AM on September 27, 2016

Most anything by John le Carré but especially The Honourable Schoolboy and The Little Drummer Girl
(Note, The Tailor of Panama is disappointing all-through).

Ive also had a bit of that sensation with Elizabeth George, some of them...

An all-time classic for the feeling "wtf did I just read" Is Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, but I've never been frustrated by the ending of a book other than because I needed the sequel NOW.
posted by Namlit at 1:27 AM on September 27, 2016

Another le Carré: Our Kind of Traitor.

Also, since you mentioned A Little Life, Yanagihara's The People in the Trees. (Ugh, that book.)

I agree with Infinite Jest, sort of. I felt this way about it the first time I read it (I was very, very close to heaving it across the room), but it settled into my bones the second time I read it and made a lot more sense. So, I guess, just read it once?

If DFW's writing scratches the compulsively readable itch for you, then The Pale King, which is unfinished, is the very definition of this type of book.
posted by minsies at 2:15 AM on September 27, 2016

Eimear McBride's The Lesser Bohemians. I read it in a single sitting, was completely absorbed in the central relationship, and within a few hours felt oddly manipulated. Pretty sure this was a deliberate strategy on McBride's part.
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 2:31 AM on September 27, 2016

The Quincunx. OMG.

On a second reading the ending does make more sense, but then you discover other oddities and unresolved mysteries. And then you read it again. And it just gets more and more opaque and peculiar. (I love it so much.)
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 3:44 AM on September 27, 2016

What you are talking about: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

Big promises, no delivery: Haruki Murakami (how can people get past this?!?!)
posted by athirstforsalt at 3:52 AM on September 27, 2016

The Notebook
posted by like_neon at 3:53 AM on September 27, 2016

A Dark-Adapted Eye by Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine is a bit this way for me. Rendell is one of my favorite modern authors and I think she has said she's proudest of this book, but the plot finally seemed like a let-down to me, for reasons I won't specify to avoid spoilers. A lot of crime novels have large flaws in the chain of reasoning, or places where the author has cheated, but that doesn't always bother me and that wasn't exactly the problem here. It was a little bit like the problem people have with In the Woods by Tana French, mentioned above.

I also feel frustrated by more than one thing I've read by Jhumpa Lahiri and William Trevor and there are others-- basically people who publish a lot in the New Yorker and whose stories often seem to have a structure where suspense is provided by letting you know the narrator has a secret and will tell you what it is when they are good and ready. I feel kind of mean disliking these stories; often the circumstances are more than enough to sustain the reading from page to page, and the characters are more or less sympathetic, but I have really become tired of this device.
posted by BibiRose at 6:04 AM on September 27, 2016

Normally I love Sarah Waters so it may be due largely to high expectations, but I totally felt this way about The Paying Guests. Utterly absorbing (especially the first half), and but frustrating and let down once I got to the end.
posted by veery at 6:28 AM on September 27, 2016

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen was this, for me.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 6:37 AM on September 27, 2016

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber : I was thinking that the writer must be kidding me!!!, that the end will be here, a few pages away... but no... I really felt betrayed in addition to frustrated. I still love the book though.
posted by Ifite at 6:41 AM on September 27, 2016

Exceptional_Hubris beat me to a Franzen reference, although for me it was Freedom (haven't read any other Franzen and will not). The first few chapters were compelling character portraits, and the next few hundred pages had an engaging plot, but by the end I both hated and was bored by all the characters, and I found the rest of the plot convoluted and forced.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:44 AM on September 27, 2016

I felt this way about Donna Tartt's The Secret History.

However, I also found several of the books people have mentioned above deeply satisfying (Bel Canto and The Historian are standouts) so... YMMV.
posted by snorkmaiden at 8:09 AM on September 27, 2016

Nthing City of Glass. Never have I been so entranced by a book only to want to launch it off a roof by the end.
posted by holmesian at 8:13 AM on September 27, 2016

Oh also: The Raw Shark Texts. Compulsively readable pulp that builds up an interesting world and then fails to really seal the deal on that world in the final act. (Think of how you felt after seeing the sequels to The Matrix.)
posted by Going To Maine at 8:28 AM on September 27, 2016

Laura Grodstein's A Friend of the Family was this for me. Totally engrossing and then the end felt like something out of a disney cartoon, cackling villain and all.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 8:36 AM on September 27, 2016

John Barth's Giles Goat-Boy. Barth was a college professor and wrote in a modern experimental style. At least, I think that's why I couldn't understand the point of a lot of his books. (I loved the Floating Opera and Sot Weed Factor, though.)
posted by SemiSalt at 9:18 AM on September 27, 2016

Cloud Atlas. So mad about that stupid book.
posted by marginaliana at 9:43 AM on September 27, 2016

I recently read A S Byatt's Possession, which is brilliant and very clever and very well told and has layers. But on consideration the covert lack of respect she has for one of the protagonists, which I suspect is very much gender-based, lets down the entire premis of the story.

Norris and Strange! Three effective set pieces in an elaborate word-pudding made of pastiche and rambling! Like scant sausages in an under-salted toad-in-the-hole. Also, some interchangeable secondary characters that not only perform identical functions in the story but look and feel alike as well.

Both books are grand pastiches, though I don't think that's significant. I think Possession won the Booker?
posted by glasseyes at 10:48 AM on September 27, 2016

Wow - so many of my absolute favorite books are now on this list, I feel like I should be mining it for recommendations...

Anyhow, I don't care, I'm going all in: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
posted by Mchelly at 10:57 AM on September 27, 2016

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane. I read this book in the grip of a (literal) fever that kept me from sleeping more than a few hours at a time, and it was a fine companion on my journey through the flu...until, maybe three-quarters to the end, I began to get a sense that a really, really, really, really stupid ending was coming up, and I was like, "Naw! This book is terrific! There's no way no how he'd ruin it with -- " He did.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:39 AM on September 27, 2016

Oh yes, as others have said, Infinite Jest. Which um, reminds me of the Goth classic, The Worm Ouroboros. I think you would have to have a special affinity for the language or the dark fantasy material to get truly invested in it, as I did, and I found the pay-off, well, just didn't pay off reading all the way through it, which is how I felt after reading Jest.
posted by Lynsey at 11:58 AM on September 27, 2016

Another: Geek Love, a fine book with a strong cult following (especially here on MetaFilter) comes to a maddeningly abrupt climax. It wrankled for days, as I wondered if that was exactly the ending the book had to have or if there was some better way for the author to tie everything up and make her characters just behave.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:51 PM on September 27, 2016

To me, your request perfectly captures The Interestings, by Meg Wolitzer.
posted by mylittlepoppet at 2:56 PM on September 27, 2016

For me it was Michael Faber's Book of Strange New Things. I recently listened to Iain Reid's I'm Thinking of Ending Things and was thoroughly pissed off at the ending.

But it's so true that tastes differ -- Cloud Atlas (which I read in about 2004? I think, anyway it was the year it came out in paperback and no one had really heard about it in the US) remains one of my favorites and I always finish it in tears.
posted by janey47 at 3:37 PM on September 27, 2016

Controversial pick: Snow Crash. World of intrigue, built on... wha? (true of a lot of Neal Stephenson's stuff.)
posted by acm at 3:40 PM on September 27, 2016

Controversial pick: Snow Crash. World of intrigue, built on... wha? (true of a lot of Neal Stephenson’s stuff.)

This is true - Neil Stephenson cannot now and has never been able to write endings.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:46 PM on September 27, 2016

Can't believe no one mentioned Life of Pi. That was the must unsatisfying finish to a very readable book that I can remember.
posted by bluejayway at 4:42 PM on September 27, 2016

Oh man, this is a Who's Who of books highly recommended to me that I then slogged through unhappily, so nthing: The Historian, Life of Pi, Strange and Norrell, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Freedom, Possession (that one in particular was infuriating). Thanks OP for articulating a category of book I'd do well to steer away from, I guess?

But Cloud Atlas is perhaps my favorite book. A Little Life felt immensely rewarding. And I'm loving Infinite Jest, though I'm only 640 pages in so there's definitely still time to be let down!

Murakami - echoing the folks who find his novels have amazing build-up and then unsatisfying ends. I cope by only reading his novellas, in which form I actually enjoy that quality, and vowing to stay far away from 1Q84. You might do well to reverse those!
posted by estlin at 8:37 PM on September 27, 2016

A Farewell To Arms, obviously very well written, the ending however..

The first two thirds of Captain Corelli's Mandolin is very enjoyable, the remainder ruins it.

The later Dune books make the first great book retrospectively meaningless.
posted by Lucy_32 at 5:15 AM on September 28, 2016

I haven't actually read Picnic at Hanging Rock--just saw the movie, which was beautiful and intensely frustrating. But the novel was, apparently, just as famously frustrating, so much so that someone even published a book of possible solutions a few years later.

However, what was even more frustrating was that the original last chapter, which provided an ending of sorts, was so laughably B-movie science fictionish that the editor suggested it be removed--and for good reason, because it was such a bizarre nonsequitur that it would have ruined the book.
posted by tully_monster at 5:17 AM on September 28, 2016

A crappy ending that comes out of nowhere is totally fine, but I think what I'm looking for even more is when an author draws you into an intensely detailed world that you get really wrapped up in, but once you're done and take a look back at the whole thing, you realize it was kind of all built on bullshit.

I just finished the first and only Dean Koontz I will likely ever read: Ashley Bell. The overall conceit was really rather interesting (and even potentially thought-provoking) and turned out to be the only thing that kept me from just giving up on the unrealistic characterization (and the mean-spirited caricatures--oy! Someone had an axe to grind!) and overwrought prose and dialogue. But once it was over, your description fit my reaction perfectly.
posted by tully_monster at 5:32 AM on September 28, 2016

Seconding The Little Friend. There's a reason everybody talks about The Secret History (which I for one found extremely satisfying) and The Goldfinch but not Donna Tartt's "other" book. MOTHERFUCKER, TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED.
posted by ostro at 8:09 AM on September 28, 2016

Oh that reminds me: Foucault's Pendulum started to lose me when the black character grew ashamed of being moved by Voduun. Then I couldn't finish it for a while due to Circumstances and then finally got to read the last few pages.

....Total let down.

Damp squid.
posted by glasseyes at 8:51 AM on September 28, 2016

Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain might fit the bill, depending on how engrossed you become with the protagonist and his life and the sanitarium. A Bildungsroman that utterly craps out. You'll want to throw it across the room but 1. It's too heavy and 2. You will have lost your will to do anything.
posted by mrcrow at 2:05 PM on September 28, 2016

glasseyes, that 'damp squid' is the entire purpose of Foucault's Pendulum, and is a welcome corrective to common conspiracy narratives.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:46 PM on September 28, 2016

'Damp squib', not 'damp squid'. A 'damp squid' of an ending is when you read the original Call of Cthulhu and find out one of pop culture's most feared monsters got taken out by a boat. And not even a battleship or an aircraft carrier, just an ordinary boat.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 6:55 PM on September 28, 2016

hmm. Almost you convince me to skim thru it again, CinS....na. It's a lot of pages just for a gotcha. At least The DaVinci Code is an effective, transparently manipulative, page turner, and happily has less pages.

I fear I will never put Eco on a pedal stool though.
posted by glasseyes at 2:22 PM on September 29, 2016

Tentacle of Trust: "This is pretty much anything by China Mieville for me"

Perdido Street Station.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:38 AM on October 3, 2016

Nthing Infinite Jest, but what nobody's seemed to mention is that unlike the books mentioned in the Ask, the dissatisfaction you come out of it with is very, very deliberate. Anyway, DFW's first novel The Broom of the System is the same way.
posted by longtime_lurker at 10:18 PM on October 5, 2016