![]() As she told the Guardian recently: “She just showed up and I saw her nosing her car into the marina and I thought: Oh man, she’s back.” In an excellent review of The Testaments, Pip Adam considers the sequel phenomenon. ![]() Nor did Elizabeth Strout plan on giving Olive Kitteridge a second airing. Margaret Atwood bided her time: she published The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985, The Testaments 34 years later. Perhaps all novelists should write with an eye to recycling. ![]() Sales for their sequels are unconditionally guaranteed. Both the originals reaped huge acclaim in print and huge amounts more as television. Days later Elizabeth Strout published Olive, Again, a follow-up to Olive Kitteridge, which won her a Pulitzer in 2008. Last month Margaret Atwood won the Booker – or half of it – with The Testaments, her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. But recently two top-ranking “literary” authors produced sequels. ![]() The prissily named category defines itself, after all, as rising above the popular. On literary fiction shelves, sequels are relatively rare. Genre fiction spawns sequels: much-loved detectives solve case after case after case, and children’s stories thrive on the comfort of repetition. It’s the year of the sequel: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, Toy Story 4, Rambo 5 … Do movies ever make it to double figures? Books and miniseries certainly do. Marion McLeod revels in the return of Olive Kitteridge, the compassionate curmudgeon who won Elizabeth Strout a Pulitzer Prize. ![]()
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