The End of the Story

The first and only novel by one of the world's greatest short story writersMislabeled boxes, confusing notes, wrong turnings - such are the obstacles in the way of the unnamed narrator of The End of the Story as she organises her memories of a love affair into a novel. With compassion, wit and what seems to be candour, she seeks to determine what she actually knows about herself and her past, but we begin to suspect, along with her, that given the elusiveness of memory and understanding, any tale retrieved from the past must be fiction.

“Extraordinary”

Unputdownable . . . [The End of the Story] freed me from the preconceptions I had then about the way novels were supposed to work . . . it deals with the heat and the thirst of infatuation, the desperation to find an end to the torment when a desired object won't reciprocate -- Olivia Sudjic Observer, 'Summer Reads 2023'
Can't and Won't is the most revolutionary collection of stories by an American in twenty-five years -- John Freeman Boston Globe
Lydia Davis's short stories are perfected economies, witty devices, precision-made, primed to release intelligence, philosophy, hilarity. They celebrate the thinking universe while they redefine the possibilities of the form. There is no other writer quite like her Ali Smith
Davis is a high priestess of the startling, telling detail. . . one of the best writers in America -- Colm Tóibín Daily Telegraph
Her work is exquisite, finely wrought and devastating. . . Read her now! -- A. M. Homes
Newsday
Breathtakingly elegant Details
Brilliant New Yorker

Lydia Davis is the author of Collected Stories, one novel and six short story collections, the most recent of which was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and her translations of modern writers, including Gustave Flaubert and Marcel Proust. She won the Man Booker International Prize in 2013.

'It surprised me, over and over, to find that I was with such a young man. He was twenty-two when I met him. He turned twenty-three while I knew him, but by the time I turned thirty-five I did not know where he was anymore.' Mislabelled boxes, confusing notes, wrong turnings - such are the obstacles in the way of the unnamed narrator of The End of the Story as she organises her memories of a love affair into a novel. With compassion, wit and what seems to be candour, she seeks to determine what she actually knows about herself and her past, but we begin to suspect, along with her, that given the elusiveness of memory and understanding, any tale retrieved from the past must be fiction Back in print at last, this is Lydia Davis's first - and so far only - novel. 'No contemporary writer has so bravely explored the severe elegance of the thinking woman' Village Voice 'Brilliant' New Yorker 'Extraordinary' Newsday 'Breathtakingly elegant' Details ' Beautifully written' Marie Claire 'Astonishing' Elle

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