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Jun 14, 2016 · In this smart and intense literary suspense novel, Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude.
- (167K)
- Kindle Edition
Jun 22, 2016 · This is a sensational review, and the book sounds provocatively haunting. I am interested in the theme; I like the tension involved and the anonymous calls, and the chilling atmosphere all lend itself to an intense journey.
- The Janitor (Guy Boyd)—And The Twist
- The Girlfriend
- The Phone Calls
- Jake
- Jake’s Parents
- The Musical Sequences
- Tulsey Town
- All of Those References
- The Author
Both versions of I’m Thinking of Ending Things, in the broadest possible sense,are about an imaginary couple on an imaginary road trip dreamed up by an elderly high school janitor who is contemplating suicide. Imaginaryisn’t quite the right word, though, because Jake, the man on the road trip, is a younger version of the janitor himself, while the ...
Both novel and film are ostensibly narrated by Jake’s (imagined, hypothetical) girlfriend, and her voice dominates both stories from the beginning: Kaufman opens his film by having Jessie Buckley read the first chapter nearly verbatim in voice-over. In the movie, however, the girlfriend is slightly more hypothetical, perhaps to reflect the fact tha...
The book also offers more evidence than does the film that the janitor is gaming out this hypothetical road trip to help him decide whether to kill himself. In the movie, the girlfriend gets a series of mysterious phone calls from someone who is leaving her voice messages. In the book, the girlfriend notes that the calls are coming from her own num...
Jake is the janitor and the janitor is Jake, so see above to find out most of what’s changed about him. One other thing worth noting is that in the film, Jake has a harder time preventing the janitor’s life from bleeding into his story. It isn’t until the 11th chapter (out of 13) that the novel’s Jake starts telling his girlfriend about the life of...
Jake’s parents are the same people in the novel and the film, except the film’s janitor has less control over his narrative. In the book, Jake and his girlfriend have an unsettling meal at his parents’ house, but except for one moment when the girlfriend notes that the mother “looks older,” there’s no sense that his parents are unstuck in time. In ...
The novel is set in an unspecified rural location, but the film, shot in New York, is explicitly supposed to be set in Oklahoma. This change was presumably made to provide a natural reason for the janitor to be extremely familiar with the musical Oklahoma!, a text that infuses the whole film. The novel doesn’t mention musical theater at all, but Ka...
In the book, Jake and his girlfriend make a late-night stop at a Dairy Queen. “Tulsey Town,” the name of the ice-cream store in the movie, was an unofficial name for Tulsa in the 19thcentury. The vintage Tulsey Town advertisement the janitor hallucinates toward the end of the film and its jingle draw heavily from this Dairy Queen ad made for drive-...
Charlie Kaufman’s personal interests and insecurities don’t derail his adaptation of I’m Thinking of Ending Things as thoroughly as they did his adaptation of The Orchid Thief, but he’s still worked a lot of them in there, primarily because allusions to other works are one of the main ways he hints that Jake’s girlfriend is fictional. “Most people ...
The final difference between the book and movie is a pretty simple one: Ian Reid has never put forward the argument that the shittiest twist ending a film could possibly have is “it was all happening inside one man’s mind,” and Charlie Kaufman has: In Adaptation, Donald Kaufman’s screenplay is the emblem of everything Charlie Kaufman hates about Ho...
- Matthew Dessem
Jun 14, 2016 · I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS. by Iain Reid ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 14, 2016. Reid’s tightly crafted tale toys with the nature of identity and comes by its terror honestly, building a wall of...
- Kirkus Reviews
Sep 2, 2016 · I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS. By Iain Reid. 210 pp. Scout Press. $22.95. Almost immediately I found myself wanting to associate Iain Reid’s suspenseful debut novel, “I’m Thinking of...
- Hannah Pittard
Nov 7, 2023 · Iain Reid’s debut novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things is an uncomfortable read. Lulled by its simple prose, we wake up in the middle of the book, realizing that instead of going to a family dinner, we are traveling to the deepest layers of the troubled and ill-balanced mind.
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Sep 17, 2020 · Throwback Thursday – “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” by Iain Reid – Book Review. Posted on September 17, 2020 by Fictionophile. The Throwback Thursday meme was created by Renee over at It’s Book Talk. She made this meme to share some of her old favorites.
