Posted by RichardG on December 10, 2007 at 14:21:16 from 217.207.172.242 user RichardG.
In Reply to: Re: "real" vs "made up" posted by Ed Kiser on December 08, 2007 at 03:29:41:
When I first read the books, as a child, one of the main attractions was the feeling that I could do the same things that the S&As did. I never thought it was likely I could sail to the Caribbean and brush with pirates (although I have since done the first half), nor be captured by pirates in the China Seas. Although GN? came as a bit of a surprise after the others, it felt to me like it was something I could do, just as the Lakes and East Anglia books did. I therefore never bracketed it with PD & ML at all. If the S&As were going to make up another story, then I would have expected it to be much more outlandish than GN? - as might have been the case if AR had ever taken the Wildcat to the Baltic. Anyone for Nancy vs. Stalin ? (actually, having written that, I think it answers the question of why AR never wrote that book).
I am afraid that I disagree with Ed when he refers to GN? bringing all the principal characters back on stage for the last time - the absence of Bridget, the Coots, the senior Walkers, Molly Blackett, even the GA, means to me that this theory does not hold up. Coots in the North, on the other hand, might well have fulfilled that role if it had been finished.