CLOSING LINES by Val Tyler

Along with a great many others I have spoken at length about opening lines. A good first line will take me through at least to the end of the first chapter, tempting me into the book. A poor one can put me off the entire story; unfair perhaps, but first impressions are powerful.

I don’t know why, but much less has been written about closing lines. Personally, I agonise over writing them as much as I do the opening. Just as a good opening line draws us into the story, a good closing line finishes the tale so neatly you feel you can go to sleep satisfied.

I am reminded of the story of the young musician who was lying in bed one evening listening to his sister playing the piano downstairs. His sister was distracted, and finished without playing the final note. The young musician could not sleep until he had climbed out of bed, trailed downstairs and finished the melody. Some closing lines can make me feel like that, as if the writer has just stopped for no apparent reason other than running out of anything else to say. Those endings leave me totally dissatisfied. Other closing lines are so neatly finished that the story line is completely and satisfactorily ended. This is why I could never write a sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. She has finished the story. There is nothing more to be said.

"With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, as well as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them."



Other endings can leave the reader with a desire to carry the tale forward. It’s sad to think that a collision with a speeding car prevented Margaret Mitchell from writing a sequel to Gone With the Wind. Scarlet’s final words suggests there was so much more in her story.


"After all, tomorrow is another day."


Occasionally, a story can stir within you such strong emotions that the reader feels bereft as the final page is finished. These stories live in my heart for ever. This how I felt at the end of The Long Green Shore by John Hepworth. The book, in which I could smell as well as visualise the jungle, is both uncompromisingly brutal and unbearably tender. The final line is a heartfelt plea that all the pain and anguish had not been in vain.

“God, there must be meaning. Fiercely he was certain there must be a meaning.

Surely, while we live we are not lost.

Surely – we are not lost – while we live.”

A story that has a clear message needs an ending that underlines that meaning, that captures the essence of the story. To my mind, no one has done this better than George Orwell at the end of Animal Farm.

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

I will leave you with Maurice Sendak’s Where the While Things Are. He intended his book to be read to children, but children or no children, I think every adult should do themselves a favour by reading his closing lines aloud. His choice of words flow rhythmically off the tongue in a way that I can only describe as beautiful.

"Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him—and it was still hot."

Film Adaptations of my Favourite Books by Val Tyler

I think some novels can be made into excellent films; others not. In my opinion, the best film-makers have writers who adapt the original text whilst keeping the story close to the original. Sometimes I like the changes that are made and sometime I do not.

I thought the changes made by Robert Nelson Jacobs to Joanne Harris’ Chocolat, and Tony Morphett’s TV adaptation of D’Arcy Niland’s The Shiralee worked exceptionally well. Both are well worth watching. But when it comes to Harry Potter, I find reading the books a better experience than viewing the films – of course, this is entirely personal preference.

Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche in Chocolat

Bryan Brown and Rebecca Smart in The Shiralee

Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliff

Naturally, it’s easy to have a fixed view when I only know one adaptation of each book. When it comes to the classics, there are so many that a definitive opinion might be more difficult.

I don’t think I’ll ever get over seeing Mrs Bennet and her daughters running down the street, screaming and showing their knees in that peculiar 1940s Hollywood adaptation. To a lesser extent, I was exasperated to watch Margaret Schlegel and Aunt Juley walking down a London street hatless. I can never quite work out whether the film makers are simply lazy or have a shallow notion of what makes a story relatable to a modern audience.

Greer Garson with her family in Pride and Prejudice.

Check out those weird costumes.

It is probably unfair to dwell on that awful Pride and Prejudice when we have Colin Firth’s amazing version (adapted by the magnificent Andrew Davies) and, despite the hatless scene, I have enjoyed Howard’s End (adapted by Kenneth Lonergan) that has just finished on TV.

This is more like it. BBC's 1995 wonderful adaptation.

 Hayley Atwell, Matthew Macfadyen and Tracey Ullman in Howard's End (BBC)

One tale has to be mentioned in December. A Christmas Carol has, arguably, been adapted more often than any other story, and a whole load of nonsense has been written about it too. I would like to confront one right now. Charles Dickens did not invent Christmas, as the title of the new film tells us. His wonderful story, teaching Ebenezer to value human beings more than money, is set at Christmas time, but is not about Christmas. The setting is what Dickens observed in his own day. Inventive as the characters and plot may be, his depiction of Christmas is not.

Michael Caine with the Muppets in The Muppets' Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol is one of the few Dickens’ novels that I have read several times. I have, on the other hand, seen The Muppets’ Christmas Carol every Christmas for the last twenty years. I find I sometimes muddle what Mr Dickens wrote with dear old Kermit. These days I cannot read the line, ‘…and to Tiny Tim, who did not die,’ without hearing Gonzo’s strongly American inflection.

But I do know the original story was not big on present-giving. The only present given was an enormous turkey to the Cratchit family. Michael Caine handing around presents at the end of the Muppets’ film was most definitely added by the Hensons.

Dickens was only suggesting that people should show good will towards each other at Christmas and, as Ebenezer is totally out of step with the rest of society, I’m guessing Dickens did not invent that. He popularised snow at Christmas, something I am told usually happened back then, but he did not invent it. He simply relayed Christmas as he knew it and in such an enchanting (and short) way that it’s still eminently readable today.

I find it interesting that the nativity is never mentioned in the book. Recently, I heard a man on the radio talking about A Christmas Carol and he referred to ‘the other Christmas story’. It took me a moment to realise he was referring to the nativity. It has become the ‘other Christmas Story’, the implication being that A Christmas Carol is the real one, or at least the one that matters. I think Dickens would have liked that, I’m not too sure about the church...

I like to think that our family knows ‘how to keep Christmas well’ and I hope it is not too early to be one of those idiots ‘who goes about with “Merry Christmas” on his lips’ while hoping not to ‘be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart,’ to wish you all very merry this Christmas.

Miss Austen's Cautionary Tales by Val Tyler

Jane Austen primarily wrote love stories about women of good sense and principal, falling in love with men of good character; but the more I read her books, the more I wonder if she had another purpose.

Miss Austen often has a subplot or backstory about a man who entices a young lady to run away with him. He may do this simply for his own amusement or vanity, or for financial gain, but he never considers the consequences that will befall the lady.

In Pride and Prejudice there is a backstory about George Wickham trying to, and very nearly succeeding in, seducing fifteen year-old Georgiana Darcy. Fortunately for Georgiana, her brother, Mr Darcy, has a great deal of sense and influence and is able to save her, thus denying Wickham her £30,000 that had been his object. If he had succeeded there would have been no alternative but to make poor Georgiana marry the womanising and profligate Wentworth, as Lydia Bennett did some time later.

Lydia Bennett and George Wickham:BBC

Wickham ran off with Lydia for his own amusement. This selfish act opened her up to malicious gossip and precluded her from decent society. The only course of action was for Lydia to marry Wickham as quickly as possible, and this she willingly did. Even so, they were a tainted couple and Lydia’s life became less than enviable. ‘Their manner of living… was unsettled in the extreme. They were always moving from place to place in quest of a cheap situation, and always spending more than they ought. His affection for her soon sunk into indifference; hers lasted a little longer…’

In Sense and Sensibility, John Willoughby is introduced to the reader as a Knight in Shining Armour, rescuing the injured Marianne Dashwood from a wet and uncomfortable hillside. As the story unfolds, the reader begins to notice his lack of judgement. He encourages Marianne to be imprudent and we begin to realise that Mr Willoughby is not quite the gentleman we originally took him for. Marianne does not have direct male protection and her mother does not have the good sense of her sister, Elinor.

Marianne Dashwood and John Willoughby:BBC

Eventually, Colonel Brandon relates to Elinor the treatment of his ward at the hands of Willoughby who, some time before, had had taken sixteen year-old Eliza away from the protection Colonel Brandon had secured for her, seduced the poor girl and, to use Brandon’s words, left her ‘in a situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.’

Colonel Brandon did not force Willoughby to marry Eliza, it was too late for that and, illegitimate as she was, Eliza has little value in society as we see in Emma with Harriet Smith. Willoughby is not even expected to provide for, or even acknowledge, his child.

In Mansfield Park, Maria Rushworth is a well-connected and wealthy married woman with male protection and an enviable place in society. She throws all this away when she runs off with Henry Crawford. He soon tires of her and her family are left with the problem of what to do with a disgraced woman. There is no way she can return to her former home and husband, and it is decided that she and her unpleasant Aunt Norris are to be found an ‘establishment… in another country, remote and private, where, shut up together with little society, on one side no affection, on the other no judgement, it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became their mutual punishment.’

Henry Crawford and Maria Rushworth:BBC

Miss Austen seldom comments on the rights and wrongs of society, but she verges on criticism when she says that, ‘...the public punishment of disgrace...’ is ‘in this world …less equal than could be wished…’

Unfair and boring though Maria’s punishment may have been, the fate of Colonel Brandon’s first love, the mother of Eliza, turned out to be tragic. Rich and well-connected though she had been, she left her loveless and miserable marriage to be with the man she loved. Her husband divorced her and, deserted by her lover and penniless (a woman’s wealth automatically passed to her husband when she married), she had no place in society. Thus, she was passed from man to man and when Colonel Brandon eventually returned to England and found her, he describes how she was, ‘So altered – so faded – worn down by acute suffering of every kind! hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to see the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had once doted…’

It is noticeable that he ‘had once doted’ on her and, excellent man though he is, Brandon had no inclination to marry her and give Eliza a name. He is a kind man and did all any man with a good name could be expected to do; he provided for them. The mother was ‘in the last stage of a consumption’. He thought that ‘life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death…’ Disgraced as she was, she was better off dead. Surely any female reader would sit up and take note.

In Northanger Abbey, Miss Austen is not explicit as to what happens between Isabella Thorpe and Captain Frederick Tilney, but society judges Isabella because she has allowed his attentions while being engaged to another man. She is disgraced and her friends, the Mitchells, are shocked to see her out in public. Shamed girls should be hidden away, and poor Isabella had no money to cushion the blow.

Isabella Thorpe and Captain Tilney:ITV 

I wonder why Miss Austen entwined such plots in her charming stories about manners and love and I suggest she was doing so for more than entertainment. There is little doubt that gossip can be delicious and people like to ooh and ah at the misfortunes of others, but I wonder if Miss Austen’s aim was to help young, innocent or bored ladies to understand the importance of protecting their reputation.

I do not suggest this was her prime motivation, but I do suggest she might have wanted her books not only to interest her reader, but to alert ladies to a certain kind of man who might not be trusted; especially young women who might be romantically inclined, but naïve. Her tales are witty and interesting, but they also demonstrate how everything can go desperately wrong. Women had to be careful. Only the very fortunate, and here I am thinking of Marianne Dashwood who had Colonel Brandon to make her respectable after tongues had wagged about her very unflatteringly. Fortunately for Marianne, she had stayed the right side of propriety and, consequently, could be accepted not only by Brandon, but by society if a man like the Colonel married her; which, of course, he did.

I like to think Miss Austen wove cautionary tales into her stories to remind women that a dalliance simply would not be worth the excitement.