Competition | 6 December 2008

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition

In Competition No. 2573 you were invited to submit the synopsis of a sequel-that-was-never-written to a well-known novel.

Sequels to books and films have a poor reputation, the assumption being that, with the odd exception (The Godfather: Part II, for example), they will almost certainly fall short of the original. I learned this lesson early having looked forward with rabid excitement to Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which failed to live up to its predecessor.

You were all on sparkling form this week. In John O’Byrne’s follow-up to Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s repressed incestuous desire finds its true expression and he marries Phoebe, but lives unhappily ever after. Josh Ekroy resurrects Jude Fawley’s son only to subject him to an even more miserable life than his dad’s (his five children drown themselves ‘coz we woz off our heads on acid’). And in Mike Morrison’s sequel to Emma, our heroine abandons Mr Knightley and takes off with Harriet Martin to live à deux in a Surrey village.