The news that there's going to be a sequel to the children's classic A Little Princess fills me with a familiar feeling of mingled dread and anticipation.
Dread because Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel is so tied up with my memories of childhood that I can't bear to think of anyone meddling in the world of Sara Crewe, "the odd little girl with the big, solemn eyes". I don't like the fact that the author, Hilary McKay, has "tried to make the children ... sound more childish than in the original", and "included a few more jokes" - Sara is brilliant because of her sweet, grown-up seriousness. (I read it again at Christmas, stirred to do so by the wonderful pen-and-ink illustrations of Margery Gill, and it stood the test of adulthood, which not all much-loved children's books do.)
Anticipation because whatever McKay has done to it, I know I won't be able to resist returning to the world of characters who meant so much to me. McKay says she's going to follow the story of Ermengarde, the "fat child who did not look as if she were in the least clever, but ... had a good-naturedly pouting mouth", and other children left behind when Sara heads off with her Indian gentleman. Will she leave Miss Minchin's seminary? Will she get her own happy ending? Yes, I imagine she'll probably do both, but I want to see it for myself anyway.
I'm such a sucker. This always happens. I fall in love with a book, with its characters, and will gulp down anything which takes me back to that world, regardless of quality.
Aged 14, I raced through Alexandra Ripley's vilified sequel to Gone with the Wind, Scarlett, desperate for a happy ending for Rhett and Ms O'Hara, and a battered copy is on my shelves today. I know it's awful - "My stars, this country's positively peppered with castles", Scarlett says during a trip to Ireland, for heaven's sake – but I didn't like leaving our heroine in the state we saw her at the end of Margaret Mitchell's arm-breaking novel. For that reason I also leapt eagerly on 2007's Rhett Butler's People – would Scarlett get her man this time round?
There are scores of (mostly awful) Pride and Prejudice sequels – from Julia Barrett's Presumption to Emma Tennant's Pemberley. And I've read a fair few of them.
Susan Hill's Rebecca sequel, Mrs de Winter? I had to buy it as soon as it came out – who wouldn't want to know what happens next? I've returned to Green Gables, to James Bond, and I'm looking forward to the sixth Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novel in the 'trilogy'.
It's not even as though most of them are any good, but I just can't help myself. At least I haven't sunk into the (very scary) world of fan fiction quite yet – and I won't have to, if the books industry keeps re-using the same fictional worlds.
