I want to read loooooong epilogues

As I was explaining in someone's else journal, I read a lot of novels about family dysfunction. That's primarily because it's become such a common theme in popular fiction, and because I get most of my reading material from my MIL. She reads a ton of books, all genres, but when she passes books on she gives the lighter stuff to her cleaning lady, the mysteries and crime thrillers to my BIL, and I get what's left, which tends to be the depressing angst-ridden material. She once apologized to me because she was worried I'd think she was sending some subliminal message by loading me up with all these books about fucked-up families. Heh.

Anyway, what drives me crazy is that JUST when the problems begin to be resolved, the characters face their demons, and the families start moving towards happiness....the book ends. I understand that's the structure of the plot--build to a crisis, achieve resolution, and the curtain falls. But it's galling to me to be involved with characters and then have the door slammed in my face the moment they start looking like their lives might improve. DAMN IT.

I suppose reading another 400 pages about ordinary cheerful happiness would get boring, but that's a kind of boring I might welcome after 36 chapters of sturm and drang.