In the novel A Complicated Kindness, the narrator, Nomi, tells us that endings are difficult for her. Let us try to explain how Nomi’s relationship with whom she loves ended and suggest why ending the story is difficult for her.
Tash & Trudie:
Her sister, Tash, becomes an atheist and runs off with her boyfriend, Ian, and her mother, Trudie, is excommunicated and chooses to leave her family rather than become “a ghost” by shunning in a town taken over by the rigid Mennonite rules. Nomi lives with her father, Ray, but she never forgets happy times her warm and spirited mother and her lovely and mouthy sister. In her mind, she always wants Trudie and Tash and hopes their eventually finding her. For Nomi, this ending is not good.
Travis:
Nomi’s boyfriend, Travis, is considered by herself as her life buoy. He accompanies her during her wandering around the town, skipping her class to help her forgetting her pains. But his parents rein him in and send him away from her so that she can not find him again. For Nomi, her relationship with Travis ended badly.
Lids:
Lids is Nomi’s best friend who is lying in a hospital. When Nomi wants to do something nice for Lids and goes to the hospital looking for Lids, but “she’s been moved to Eden” (228). Is this a type of euphemism to show Lids’s death? So Nomi becomes so disappointed with Lid’s death that she thinks that she was dying. The ending of her relationship with Lids is as good as she hopes.
Ray:
After the visit of Nomi’s uncle, The Mouth, her father, Ray, knows that Nomi has been excommunicated (235) because of her lack of attendance, unchanging out of her cut – offs and bikini top, wearing police boots. He decided to keep his faith and stay in town and abandon her, although she is the kid he loves but he “[can not] acknowledge” (240). This is the painful ending for Nomi because she will have no family member to live with.
Suggest why Nomi has great difficulty finishing her story
In the end of the novel,...