Alison Flood 

Unexpected sequels: Writers’ happy – and unhappy – returns

Audrey Niffenegger is writing a follow-up to The Time Traveler's Wife, which is exciting news for fans. Such additions to favourite stories can be terrific. But not always
  
  

The Time Traveler's Wife
Coming out again … the 2009 film of The Time Traveler's Wife with Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams. Photograph: Alan Markfield Photograph: Alan Markfield

Audrey Niffenegger spoke at the World Science Fiction Convention on Friday about the sequel to her mega-bestseller The Time Traveler's Wife that she's currently working on - the book started out as a little extra for the digital edition, but according to a Reddit Q&A Niffenegger did earlier this year, she "got a bit obsessed" and "decided to keep working on it".

The author has said that the sequel will be based on the life of the daughter of the original time traveller, Henry. Alba, she's said, will be "mostly" an adult in the book, which is "about her relationships (she is married to two very different men) and her family life and her struggles with making music". Society now knows about "Chrono-Displacement" - the ability to time travel – she told Reddit: "Oliver, one of Alba's husbands, is from the second half of the 21st century, so he has seen much more evolution in society's ideas about time travel."

I wasn't hugely moved by The Time Traveler's Wife, but a lot of people were. It has sold 1.5m copies, according to the Bookseller: this sequel is going to be a big deal, when it finally comes out. Niffenegger said on Friday that "my own [writing] process tends to be slow … I don't know if any of you have noticed that I don't tend to crank out a novel every two weeks."

But it got me thinking about unexpected sequels, and the joy of discovering that an author is returning to a world you never thought they'd revisit. I am a huge Robin Hobb fan, but largely because of her six Fitz and the Fool books - intelligent fantasy doorstoppers featuring possibly the best wolf in fiction (I miss you, Nighteyes), and a wonderfully complex relationship between her two male leads. I've reread them too many times to count. Their brilliance means I've also read the rest of her books - the Liveship ones are good, but they don't match Fitz and the Fool; the Soldier Son trilogy didn't grab me; the Rain Wilds books felt a bit thin, compared to the Farseer ones.

So the news that she's returned to my favourite characters, in the just-published Fool's Assassin, has filled me with delight. I've just started my copy, and, a few pages in, sinking back into the voice of Fitz, hearing about how his life has turned out, feels like being bundled up in a warm, comforting blanket. I hope she pulls it off, because these are characters who really matter to me.

I'd been equally thrilled to learn of Stephen King's The Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep, which picked up with little Danny Torrance, he of the psychic powers, as an adult. It didn't exactly disappoint me – I liked it, and I loved seeing a grown-up Dan – but it wasn't as all-guns-blazing, pedal-to-the-metal scary as The Shining. A result of the different ages at which I read them both? Possibly. I just know I was gripped, but not obsessively so – and I had been hoping hoping for more.

And don't even talk to me about Jean M Auel's Clan of the Cave Bear series. I loved them so much as a young teenager, but was so very disappointed by The Land of Painted Caves that I haven't even finished it.

But now I'm thinking about which other sequels I'd love to see. I'm talking about books by the original author, rather than estate-approved follow-ups to the likes of Fleming, Conan Doyle, Wodehouse and Christie - which can work, but which aren't quite the same.

No – what I'd like to see is China Miéville tell us exactly what happened to the Hosts, post Embassytown. I'd be oh-so-intrigued to see what happened to the kids from Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden. And I'd really like it if Philip Pullman published The Book of Dust sometime soon.

How about you?

 

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