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In general I would say no... DomA Send a noteboard - 13/01/2012 02:14:35 AM
but should unfinished books like The Mystery of Edwin Drood be "finished" after the author's death? Can it ever work?


Not really.

Drood is a special case, though, as an unfinished mystery. It's terribly tempting to attempt to puzzle it out and continue the story to the end.

I don't think the right way is to attempt to mimick Dickens and finish the novel, though. I don't find it offensive or anything, just a useless venture.

There's a very good, amusing italian novel where the authors had fun assembling together a team of ficton's great detectives in a kind of symposium that would attempt to solve the mystery of Drood. Their novel alternated between this frame story and the text of Drood, so that involved the reader as well. That, I think, is was a very interesting way to do it.

The miniseries doesn't sound like a bad idea. Again, it is trying to adapt Dickens in another medium, and provide their own take on the ending, which is fine by me, and different from trying to actually try to finish the novel.


I've read Sanditon by Jane Austen - or what there is of it - and I can't imagine another author being able to complete it satisfactorily.


Likely not, and it's a good example of "what would be the point?". Not matter how hard the writer tries, there won't be more Jane Austen in there than there is the unfinished novel. Unfinished works are really for scholars and huge fans of a writer, especially when it's literature.

Do you know of any successful examples of unfinished works being completed by others?


The Silmarillion, to an extent.

And what do you think of the current trend to "resurrect" series - new Bond books, new Hitch Hiker books, etc?


Personally I find them irritating. They're rarely anything but attempts to cash on the success of famous previous works, and very bad ones at that.

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