![]() They discuss the discovery of his body and the notebooks, but it is only when they read them that they understand what happened. They note how withdrawn and disturbed he became and that he used to spend much of his time on his own writing in notebooks. They talk about how he came from a farm, and that his parents had died long ago. Jake was a student who dropped out of college 30 years ago and was employed at the school as a janitor. Near the end of the book, it is revealed they are talking about Jake. Many of the chapters of the book are separated by conversations between two strangers who discuss a horrific incident that occurred at the school, implied to be a murder, but later revealed to be a suicide. As they bleed to death from their injuries, the narrator refers to themself as "A single unit, back to one. The narrator agrees, straightens the hanger out, and stabs themself in the neck with the sharp end. He gives the narrator a metal clothes hanger from the closet and says, "I'm thinking of ending things". ![]() The janitor, revealed to be a middle-aged Jake, finds them in his room. The narrator ends up suffering a breakdown once his fantasy breaks down. ![]() Instead, he wrote about her to live out their relationship as a maladaptive fantasy. Jake hoped to meet her again, but that never happened. They recall how they wished they had given the woman in the pub their phone number that trivia night, but they were too shy. The narrator, now an amalgam of different people, makes their way to the janitor's room and climbs into the closet. It soon becomes apparent that the narrator and Jake are in fact the same person. Making her way there, hoping to find a way out, she starts to physically deteriorate, and begins referring to herself using the plural "we", rather than "I". The narrator remembers where the gym is, even though she has never been to the school before. At this point the narration begins to become more fractious and disjointed, with the narrator losing sight of their identity. Frightened, she wishes she had ended things with Jake. Jake's girlfriend relives traumatic childhood experiences of a neighbor visiting her mother and threatening to take her away. Believing it to be the janitor, she tries to hide and quickly gets lost. She searches the long corridors in the main building, then realizes she is being followed. Furious, Jake leaves her alone in the car and enters the school building to confront him.Īfter a long wait in the cold car, Jake's girlfriend goes looking for him. After doing so, he starts making out with her in the car in front of the school, but stops due to a flashback memory where he sees the janitor watching them from one of the windows. After getting back on the road, Jake wants to dispose of their trash at a nearby deserted high school. She recognizes one of the girls that works at the Dairy Queen, but can't pinpoint why. During the long drive home, Jake decides to stop at a Dairy Queen, to which the narrator reluctantly agrees. They ask her awkward questions and she sees unsettling things, like a picture of Jake as a child that looks as if it could be her. The evening with Jake's parents turns out to be unpleasant and scary. It is a long drive, and they engage in lengthy philosophical discussions. She has been considering "ending things," but has not told him yet. Several weeks later, he takes her to meet his parents on their remote farm. They met in a pub during a college trivia night, and Jake gave her his phone number by writing it on a piece of paper and slipping it into her bag. The story is narrated by Jake's unnamed girlfriend of only a few months. In 2020 Netflix released a film adaptation of the book, written and directed by Charlie Kaufman and starring Jesse Plemons, Jessie Buckley, Toni Collette, and David Thewlis. The novel was selected by National Public Radio as one of the best books of 2016, was a finalist in the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award, and appeared on the 2017 Ottawa Independent Writers Frank Hegyi Award for Emerging Authors longlist. The book has been described as a psychological thriller and horror fiction, and is about a young woman who has many doubts about her relationship with her boyfriend but nevertheless takes a road trip with him to meet his parents. It was first published in June 2016 in the United States by Simon & Schuster. I'm Thinking of Ending Things is the 2016 debut novel of Canadian writer Iain Reid.
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