Posted by Duncan on February 16, 2002 at 11:00:06 from 152.163.201.57:
In Reply to: Re: Coots in the North posted by Dave W on February 16, 2002 at 09:11:35:
I would have thought Hugh Brogan would have been able to reveal a few more secrets about the plot if it had been written in quite the systematic way of it's predecessors. I suspect he was a bit less sure where Coots in the North was going and was writing some chapters to hope things would develop from the writing (as he would also appear to have done with 'The River Comes First'). And it's a lot easier to finish a book if you know how it's going to end. Having said that - it would seem quite odd to tackle chapters at completely different stages in the book without a chapter-by-chapter synopsis (if you were hoping the plot would emerge from the writing, the trick would be to move forward from the start rather than trying to join dots later on) - so perhaps there is a lost synopsis somewhere. One can't help suspect AR fancied doing something with Coots in the North and The River Comes First at some stage as he was a relentless burner of discarded material.
Intriguing. So - re-working my initial statement - I think it's unlikely that there's a chapter by chapter synopsis amongst the explored papers that Hugh Brogan and others have researched as otherwise we'd have had more of the plot revealed in the editor's notes... Are there some missing records?
Duncan