Abrupt Endings

As I mentioned in the sidebar, I've read two of Jodi Picoult's books. My first was Plain Truth, and most recently The Pact. Both were great and I think Picoult has a gift for creating well-rounded characters, for realistic dialogue, and for taking a controversial topic and covering many sides of it.

My one caveat with both books is the endings. In each case, the ending happened suddenly with no resolution of loose ends. I'm not talking about a happy ending. I love foreign movies so I don't expect happy endings. Picoult does a wonderful job of slowly revealing important clues and plot points to the readers. She does not, however, bring them all together in the end. For example, in The Pact, one of the key elements to the reason for the suicide of one of the characters is never mentioned again after the the 4th chapter. The other characters in the story don't even learn about it at all, though the other reasons for her suicide are slowly discovered.

It just feels as if Picoult writes a wonderful story and then either grows tired of it, or is obliged to meet an editor's deadline, so she wraps everything up in a few sentences. As I said, I'm starting on another of her books soon, so I'm hoping the problem with these first two was just a coincidence and not an indication of her writing style in general.

PS. I just found out that Lifetime made TV movies of both of these books. Unfortunately, they're not showing either anytime soon, but I am curious about how good the movies are.