Intaglio: A Novel in Six Stories Book

This book was SUCH a disappointment. I'd heard of the author, kept seeing the book around, and decided to give it a shot. It started out okay and got better as the story moved forward. Some of the period references got old (for example, instead of just mentioning rations, the author went on and on, describing the different ways this affected their lives), but I was willing to overlook that because I was drawn into the lives of the main characters. When I neared the end, I thought how much I was actually enjoying this book - and then the author went and wrote the absolute worst ending I have ever read in a book. Seriously. The ending absolutely ruined the book for me - it skipped forward in the future, robbing the reader of understanding WHY anything happened and HOW it happened, and it seemed like the author did not know how else to end it but wanted to surprise the readers. It completely ruined my opinion of the book. It just made me mad and did not make me ever want to read another thing by this author. I hate it when an ending is bad, but it's even worse when the ending is SO bad that it makes you forget all the good parts about the novel!