Argh this damn fool author did the thing I despise where a character is a failed or doubted writer, who is writing a book, that is also about what this book is about, 40 years in a family or whatever, and the character doesn't have an ending just jumbled marginalia, and we learn this, all of this, near the end, not as a layered twist but just as the author's device for saying he doesn't have an ending either, though of course it does end.