The Northern Clemency

The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher was a contender for this year's Man Booker prize though it didn't win. I was attracted by its cover - not always a reliable way to pick one's reading matter.

In this case it didn't let me down. This is a panoramic novel covering 20 years in the life of two families - the Glovers and the Sellers - who live opposite each other in a Sheffield suburban street. Their day to day lives are covered in great detail - boring to some but I found it enthralling. The writing is excellent and the characters come to life on the page. Nothing earth shattering happens - there's a serious illness towards the end of the book, a near divorce and involvement in a court case and some deaths of mainly minor characters which are not described in detail. There are misunderstandings and misconnections, people fall out and drift apart and they agonise over trivial decisions. Plans are made and abandoned and hobbies are pursued with more or less enthusiasm.

The period covered by the novel is the mid 1970's to the mid 1990's and the miner's strike has a part to play in the lives of some, though not all, the characters. It is reminiscent of nineteenth century novelists such as Dickens and deserves to become a classic in its own right.

My only complaints about the novel are that at 738 pages it is physically difficult to read and whilst the book is divided into 5 sections it doesn't have chapters as such - making it difficult to decide where to stop reading.

More time off and sequels

I have another two weeks off. After that I can either go back to work straightaway or ask for another week or two. I was offered 4 weeks straight off but felt that was too long. It has improved tremendously over the last 10 days. I can use the computer for longer without taking a break and some of the time doing day to day stuff I even forget I've had a problem with my arm. On the other hand I still cannot lift a kettle full of water and getting food out of a dish and onto a plate can be quite uncomfortable still. My doctor said I must not go back to work until it is all right as once I start using it more it won't heal properly. I have spoken to the boss who seems reasonably ok about it and also said he didn't want me to come back until it had healed properly. Things are still up in the air at work apparently and nothing much has happened.

I am still looking into commercially published sequels to classic novels and more appear out of the woodwork all the time. I have managed to find one for Charles Dickens - it's called John Jasper's Secret: a Sequel to the Mystery of Edwin Drood by Henry Morford. There are various ones for Henry James as well. Joan Aiken has several sequels to her name mainly Jane Austen. The Brontes also seem to be favourites for sequels. There is a sequel to E F Benson's Mapp and Lucia novels and even one to The Secret Garden. It's a fascinating subject even if most of them seem to have sunk without trace.

Jane Austen Sequels

I am currently intrigued by the number of Jane Austen sequels/prequels etc there are out there. I had a quick scout round on Amazon and came up with a grand total of 67 though I'm sure there are more than that. I then looked up www.pemberley.com - which is a largely American site devoted to all things Jane. They have a section on sequels/prequels where I found more of them - and their lists didn't include some I'd found. The site also includes fanfiction - i.e stories which fans have posted which may or may not be of any literary merit at all.

Some authors seem to have made a career out of sequels to famous novels - e.g. Emma Tennant - who has also written around the Brontes as well. I've also located one by Rachel Billington - Perfect Happiness - a continuation of Emma. I suppose one of the well known books on this sort of theme is Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea which has become a classic in its own right and deals with the early life of the first Mrs Rochester - the mad woman in the attic from Jane Eyre.

The attraction of such literary efforts must be partly that the characters are already in existence so potentially you have a ready made audience for the book. Though of course the purists may not consider them to be worth reading. Many sequels do fail to achieve the popularity of the original - the sequel to Gone with the Wind sank without trace. Many of the spin offs from Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca have not been commercial successes.

Of course using the characters from work which is out of copyright is attractive as well, though sequels of works mentioned above have been sanctioned and even encouraged by copyright holders.

I have not checked to see whether there are any sequels to the works of Charles Dickens or Anthony Trollope. Both these authors must have abandoned minor characters who could be turned into heroes and heroines of their own stories and yet no one seems to have taken up the challenge - or not that I have heard of. Does anyone know any different?