What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

I'm looking for a book that starts with the ending and then goes back and tells the story.

Do you mean that the book begins with a spoiler - revealing what happens at the end - and then begins at the beginning?

Or are you also looking for the more general "frame stories" where for example people are sitting around and they reveal maybe some minor details of the story, which is already in the past, and then the whole story is told?

Two classic frame stories are Heart of Darkness and The Turn of the Screw.

The Devil's Hour by indie author Raymond Esposito does that.

It starts with the MC writing down what happened while whatever is after him is at his door.

It's in first person POV.

the spoiler. I will look for the suggestions on my kindle

Maybe Twins by bari wood? Also known as dead ringers

Donna Tartt's The Secret History is a great example of this. A murder mystery where you know pretty much on page 1 whodunit, then the rest of the book is going back and explaining why.

W.R. Burnett's Goodbye to the Past: Scenes from the Life of William Meadows (1934) starts with the main character's death and works backward to his birth. Some critics at the time were baffled and thought the publisher had bound the chapters in the wrong order.

Kathy wrote: "W.R. Burnett's Goodbye to the Past: Scenes from the Life of William Meadows (1934) starts with the main character's death and works backward to his birth. Some critics at the time we..."

That sounds intriguing. Lately I've been scouting the used bookstores for novels from the 1920s and 1930s; they're so different from what we get today. Recently I finished Monk's Magic (1931); aside from being a great story it has a consistent anti-organized-religion theme which I didn't expect to find in a novel from that era.

1930's were the time of the rise of the gangsters and also a lot of people were still dealing with the aftermath of WWI--which left a lot of disillusioned men and women behind. And then you had the Great Depression (which was a world wide event) and the fall out from that as well. The rise of Hitler, Socialism, Communism. . . So yeah, there was a lot of anti-everything basically.

10 things we did (and probably shouldn't have)

The Outsiders!

You might like something from this list. I see that the screenplay for "Sunset Boulevard" is on the "Dead Narrators" list. That's the first thing I thought of when I saw your query https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

This one All the Light We Cannot See Begins in 1945, when most of the book ends. And then switches between times to begin telling the story.
Annie on My Mind Also begins at the ending as a way of peaking the reader's interest, before going back to the beginning of the story.

Bluestar's Prophecy begins with what happens in another book in the series, from another character's POV, if that counts

"Thirteen Reasons Why" is another such book. It's a story about suicide of a teenage girl and why she did it.

The Egyptian begins when Sinuhe, now as an old man, starts telling his life story.

Wild Animus

Milkweed? This one is about a Jewish old man who tells of his past during the holocaust.

Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal is a great book and one of my personal favourites! It starts with a surprise ending - if that makes sense. I still can't believe that it ended how it did. Definitely a worthwhile read.

Milkweed for the click.

Thanks, Michele. I was doing this comment on my iPod, so I don't have the click option.

Isn't it a serious pain that the apps are so limited. More and more people are going to just using a tablet or their phone, so someone needs to wake up, smell the coffee and get the apps updated.

Haha, I guess. It doesn't bother me that much, though. The person could always search it up. Or we could always go on our laptop to do add the link/click.

When it bothers me is when I'm traveling. I have several elderly relatives that I have to visit--and computers are NOT a part of their lives. So I have to get by on my phone and, to a much lesser degree, my tablet. The tablet doesn't have 4G capabilities, which is a mistake that will NOT be repeated when I have to replace it.

And I remember reading a book that was an early mystery--one of the first stories that was specifically identified as a mystery--where the entire start of the book is from the murderers pov--and it starts with the murder. Unfortunately, it's been a lot of years since I read that (for an English class when I was still in high school--and I'm a class of 1973, so yes, a few years) and no way can I remember the title. And unfortunately, what I've just written is ALL that I remember about the book. And I'm reasonable certain that that teacher is probably dead--he was getting ready to retire when he had me in his class. He was an interesting teacher. He liked to take people through weird byways of literature. For that particular class, we were studying the evolution of the mystery, from the early ones where the author held back facts from the readers so that no one could figure out whodunit, to Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins to Ellery Queen and Rex Stout to more modern writers. We also "viewed" in our reading the different TYPES of mystery--police procedurals, cozy, non-cozy but amateur detectives, hard-nosed etc.

While I was always a reader Mr. King got me reading books that I'd never even considered before. And, as a result, I still adore the man, even after more than 40 years.

Ann--might your book be Malice Aforethought, by Anthony Berkeley Cox? I just looked in the add book/author and couldn't find this specific book/author pairing, but it's in Wikipedia. It's a 1931 book about a doctor who murders his wife.

A Dark-Adapted Eye by Barbara Vine. It is incredibly suspenseful, especially in the last few chapters, even though you basically know what's going to happen. I found the book hard to put down, although in the last 30 pages or so I was starting to have anxiety attacks about the crime which was about to be described, so I kept putting the book away every couple pages and reading something else. I think it takes a really great writer to create such suspense when the plot is pretty much already revealed.

I would call this a whydunnit rather than a whodunnit.

Pamela wrote: "Ann--might your book be Malice Aforethought, by Anthony Berkeley Cox? I just looked in the add book/author and couldn't find this specific book/author pairing, but it's in Wikipedia. It's a 1931 b..."

Here it is Malice Aforethought. It's under Cox's pseudonym of Francis Iles.

Lie Down in Darkness

Struck by lightning by Chris Colfer is one of my favourites. I definitely recommend it

Summer House with Swimming Pool

I read somewhere that John Irving says he always starts his novels at the end, you just don't know it is the end until you get to it. Isn't a direct spoiler, but more of an "Ohhhh ..." moment if you know that and finish one of his novels.

Wolf in White Van

Where the Red Fern Grows, also.

The Cold Eye of Heaven

probably not it cause it's YA but Falling Into Place is one I read like that

To Kill a Mockingbird The first sentence is in the present ad the rest of the book tells how Jeb broke his arm. But I'm sure you read it.

The Hero and the Crown starts in the middle, then goes back and tells the story in order.

Somebody on This Bus Is Going to Be Famous!, by J.B. Cheaney. It is a middle grade book.

The Debut

Spring Torrents

The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler! This is one of my favorites. :) Flannery is a senior in high school who just happened to murder one of her classmates (Not a spoiler - she says it in the opening pages). Now she's going back and editing her diary chronicling the events leading up to that fateful night, so she can publish her story and let everyone know what really happened. A good one if you like unreliable narrators. :)

This is slightly different but still a very good read IMO. Fallen by David Maine. This book is about the first family, i.e. Adam, Even, Cain, and Abel. Now I do not generally enjoy religious books but this book was more just about this family and not so much any sort of religious aspects. I found it fascinating.

Spoiler for anybody who knows nothing about basic bible stories: The book begins with the death of Cain. Then, with each chapter, goes back a little in time. The book basically tells its story in reverse. It ends with Adam and Even being cast out of Eden. It was an extremely interesting way to tell the story (especially a story that most people know, at least in its barest form), and I greatly enjoyed it. Highly recommended.

The Other by Thomas Tryon

Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov. One of his earliest novels, 1934, maybe? So it's less ornately written, but he tells you right off the bat what's going to happen. But how it happens is sad and funny and awful and it's sort of a pre-WW II European romance/thriller/psychological study.

The Art of Dancing in the Rain kinda starts off with the ending first, and then it tells the story.

The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman You'll see some reviews on GR that says it could be read backwards and here is another review: "This is one of those mysterious hauntings that works backwards to solve the case of WHY. Wonderful puzzle pieces, complex, soulful characters, very believable, multi-faceted love,in the 1950's and 1960's time period, all to tantalize you and keep you reading till all hours of the night. ENJOY!" from this page http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/third...

Before the Fall

The Silence in the Garden

The Other Woman's House by Sophie Hannah

Invitation to the Game kind of does that. The first few lines of the book are also the last few lines. YA, searched for about 14 (OCD kicked in and I had to go see how many times it really was, sorry) times by various people who were trying to remember the title of the book.