Posted by Andy on August 08, 2008 at 08:56:13 user AndyG.
In Reply to: Great Northern & Characters as Adults posted by Mike Dennis on August 07, 2008 at 08:31:41:
I don't like the "made up" books, PD, ML and GN.
Evgenia, I think I'm right in recalling, hated PM. If she'd bludgeoned Arthur into not finishing it (and I must admit here that it's one of my favorites), then the cycle might well have ended at ML, with PP the last of the "lake" books. :-o
GN required an idea by Mr. North, and it simply doesn't work for me. It's a new location, an unlikely premise. It felt odd when I first read it as a child, and much of it felt strained and wooden when I read it again as a young adult. So much so that I haven't read it for twenty five years.
CN - while the fragments we have are admittedly a work-in-progress - just doesn't seem to work. I suspect Arthur lost his way with this: he had some ideas, but the ability to gel these together never materialised.
So, perhaps Rowling is doing the right thing by saying "enough" with Harry Potter. And perhaps the Swallows and Amazons sequence should have ended with PM. Certainly the other short stories in the compilation Coots in the North show a writing style that is mature and entertaining (particularly "Two shorts and a long"). I'd have welcomed more of these and no GN any day.