I’m Thinking Of Ending Things

Author: Iain Reid

Date Published: June 14th, 2016

Pages: 241

🧵 Synopsis

A new couple are taking a road trip to see Jake’s parents who live on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Jake’s girlfriend is narrating. We don’t find out much about her, only that she is thinking of ending things. This is a very ambiguous statement, and we don’t find out what it means until near the end of the book. We are taken on a journey of creepy settings, unsettling situations, people that are hiding things, things that just don’t make sense… until they do.

🔖 Memorable Quotes

“Just tell your story. Pretty much all memory is fiction and heavily edited. So just keep going”.

“A memory is its own thing each time it’s recalled. It’s not absolute. Stories based on actual events often share more with fiction than fact. Both fictions and memories are recalled and retold. They’re both forms of stories. Stories are the way we learn. Stories are how we understand each other. But reality happens only once”. 

“It makes me wonder: What if suffering doesn’t end with death? How can we know? What if it doesn’t get better? What if death isn’t an escape? What if the maggots continue to feed and feed and feed and continue to be felt? This possibility scares me”. 

“To exist means nothing other than we despair… for we don’t exist, we get existed. I kept thinking about what that meant after I read it”.

“I think there’s a perception that fear and terror and dread are fleeting. That they hit hard and fast when they do, but they don’t last. It’s not true. They don’t fade unless they’re replaced by some other feeling. Deep feeling will stay and spread if it can. You can’t outrun or outsmart or subdue it. Untreated, it will only fester. Fear is a rash”. 

🧠 My Thoughts

I want to give a spoiler free review, which will mean I am limited in what I can say. I can explain the feelings I had whilst reading this though!

Whilst I was reading this book I felt like I was wandering through the Silent Hill game. The snow, the imagery, the sense of dread. The feeling that each setting was changing before my eyes. That feeling of not quite knowing why I’m here. Not knowing who to trust. I couldn’t even trust the narrator.

The book is written in a looping way. We come back to the same thoughts and each time we are more confused. When the narrator first told us they’re thinking of ending things, I thought it was obvious what they meant but nothing is as it seems. We’re not even sure who the narrator is, they tell us at the start that they don’t want to see their reflection today. This adds to the creepiness, we are being told a story, but we don’t even know who is telling it.

The book is heavy in symbolism that chilled me to my core at times. Now that I know what this book is really about, I want to read it again straight away to see it from my new perspective.

This book was a fully immersive experience, and I thought it was amazing!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐