Most of the time that I was reading "Her Fearful Symmetry" by Audrey Niffenegger I enjoyed the novel. I began to care about the characters, with a few exceptions, and I was hopeful that by the end of the book they would redeem themselves in some way. Maybe they'd learn an important lesson, become free like they'd always wanted, fall in love and be loved back, learn to live by themselves -- the possibilities were endless.
It didn't have to be a happy ending, but this ending wasn't good for anybody. You're rooting for these people and then, at the end of the book, you're left feeling ... unresolved. You walk away with the sense that Niffenegger ran out of ideas so she just shrugged her shoulders and said, "Well, OK, this will have to do, I guess."
I don't think I've ever finished reading a book and been so cranky. Usually, I'm happy because I came to the end of a long, satisfying journey. This time I felt like my guide left me a mile before the end of a 10-mile tunnel then decided to turn back and let me find my own way out. I walked around the house in a cranky fog, folding laundry and getting ready for bed aimlessly, before I went to sleep.
But, maybe that's the dilemma for a lot of writers. Maybe the end pleased Niffenegger (thought I don't know how) and that's all she was concerned about. Maybe she didn't think about the readers. She knew that by the time she got to page 360 in the 400-page book that she'd gotten us so interested that we were going to read all the way to the end, so what did she care if we didn't like what she did with the rest of the book? Some writers write to make themselves happy and others want to please their readers. Hopefully, you can do both.
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