One of the most common pieces of criticism regarding many novels is: the ending sucked.

It seems much easier to write a great beginning, to sustain the quality through the middle sections and then, suddenly, to flop the ending. In fact, reading the ending of any book is a strange experience, because we expect brilliance. I always have this nervous feeling when I turn to the last page. I can barely focus on the words because my mind is over-conscious, over-analytic, waiting for some final metaphor or conclusion of the plot. Many times I have to put the book down, let my heart rate settle, relax for a minute, and then just read straight through.

And if I’m experiencing heart palpitations reading the ending of book, then God knows what the writer is going through. It’s common to hear of an ending being rewritten dozens of times, which is why, perhaps, endings can fall apart so easily. They are analyzed so manically that a writer can lose sense of the greater story. Endings become fragments, abstractions, worlds within themselves.

There is, however, the rare case where a book can begin poorly and end fantastically. Such is the case with Paul Bowles’ “Sheltering Sky,” published in 1949.

This book was recommended to me by a friend who studied abroad in Morocco, who basically just said, “Wait until you get to the last few chapters.” I asked what he meant. “You’ll see,” he said.

I would indeed see. And I can now say that it is among the more spectacular and strange endings I’ve come across, ever.

But to begin at the beginning: The novel follows three British characters who are traveling through Morocco — Port Moresby, his wife Kit Moresby and their friend George Tunner. All you really need to know is that there is an illicit love affair going on with Kit and Port as they travel through the country. That’s really about it. As I said, the beginning is slow and boring. It reads like the boring British literature we read in high school — little action, upset rich people, passive-aggressive quibbles, occasional witticisms, etc … If it weren’t for the Bowles’ searing descriptions of small Moroccan towns, I would have considered putting it down.

Alas, I fought through, and reached the last 60 pages, where the book howls and writhes, as if out of nowhere. Seriously, it’s like somebody suddenly punched you in the gut with brass knuckles.

Out of nowhere, Bowles begins riffs like this: “There was a screaming sound in each ear, and the difference between the two pitches was so narrow that the vibration was like running his fingernail along the edge of a new dime. …His cry went through the final image: the spots of raw bright blood on the earth. Blood and excrement. The supreme moment, high above the desert, when the two elements, blood and excrement, long kept apart, merge. A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky’s clarity…”

This is the description of Port Moresby dying of typhoid. And while he is hallucinating and perishing, his wife, Kit, has lost her mind and has wandered out into the desert, where she passes out, is picked up the next morning by a caravan of riders on camels heading out toward the distant city. Kit gets swooped up and quickly becomes the concubine of one of the riders, and is eventually locked away in a room in a different Moroccan city. Seriously.

It’s possible that my plot description seems so farfetched and bizarre that you are rolling your eyes and thinking, “This is too random and weird. No thanks.”

But somehow, mysteriously, this ending works. It’s as if Bowles had to set us up with the boredom in order to really dazzle us at the end. He completely switches the tone and style, creating this aura of madness, hallucination, delirium. It’s as if the characters are released from the stifled banality of everyday life, and their pent-up rage shatters over the last 60 pages.

There’s a great picture of Paul Bowles — a sophisticated man of letters in his fine suits — next to Allen Ginsburg and William S. Burroughs in Morocco. Makes you wonder if those Beats might have rubbed off on Bowles a little bit.