Posted by Dave Thewlis on 01/21/00 from adsl-63-200-128-218.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net:
In Reply to: A Fine romance posted by Jeremy Kriewaldt on January 21, 2000 at 13:58:53:
I agree with Jeremy about Parkinson's "Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower" -- while I never
thought it was a real biography I think it is tremendously well done and in fact an excellent
biography. And personally I like "Thrones, Dominations". By extension I probably agree that
the issue is whether the works would be well done or a travesty -- and much of that would be
opinion (one hopes). I also have concerns about how well an AR followon would be done, but I
don't think I would exclude an attempt out of hand.
I don't think however than a completion of "Coots in the North" (by AR, that is) would have "solved" the Nancy/Tom
question or any similar questions. I think there is reason to believe that AR quite intentionally
dealt with the children as children, and indeed as they grew older in the later stories his focus
shifted to younger children. I suspect he simply wasn't interested in writing stories where
romantic interest or involvement became part of the storyline -- so as the characters grew older
they perhaps became less three-dimensional and the focus shifted to the younger ones, still children.