Mental Floss

Can You Match the Last Line to the Famous Novel?

See if you can figure out how these celebrated works come to a conclusion.

Let’s see how well you know your literature.
Let’s see how well you know your literature. | Thomas Barwick/DigitalVision/Getty Images (woman), ahmad agung wijayanto/Shutterstock (question marks)

When it comes to citing novels, opening sentences often come to mind. In Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992), readers are invited in with the following: “The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.”

Hooking a reader is one thing; punctuating a book with a closing sentence is another. Those final words should provide a sense of closure while keeping the reader’s interest piqued. It should give them motivation to recommend the book to friends and perhaps even cause them to muse about the lives of the characters beyond the parting words.

See if you can match the last lines to the famous novel they conclude in the quiz below.

Naturally, a closing line is different from a book’s overall conclusion. The latter may prove satisfying or not. In 2020, a tally of Goodreads reviews found that readers were often disappointed by the wrap-ups in Atonement (Ian McEwan), Lord of the Flies (William Golding), and The Giver (Lois Lowry). The largest number of complaints was reserved for a play: Romeo and Juliet.

Once you taken this quiz, see how well you fare in matching the opening sentence to the famous novel.

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