“I’ve always written the books I wanted to write, and at the time I thought was right,” says Joanne Harris, whose forthcoming novel Vianne will be the fifth book featuring the main character from her 1999 bestseller Chocolat.
“Vianne and I do have a lot in common, not least the experience of motherhood and a certain attitude to food, and we have grown alongside each other over the years,” she says. “Given how much I write about my own experiences, relationships and family, I think it’s inevitable that this character, among all of them, should keep coming back with new stories to tell.”
Many authors seem to feel this compulsion: as well as the books by Harris, Welsh and Tóibín, Think Again by Jacqueline Wilson was published earlier this year – a sequel for adults to her bestselling Girls series for teenagers. And that’s on top of Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, and The House of Fortune by Jessie Burton, a follow-up to The Miniaturist, both published after a long gap.
There are plenty of reasons why a writer might return to the events or characters of a successful novel years later – not least because there is a fanbase ready and waiting. Which, in turn, means there’s more chance of the book making money, if we’re being cynical about it.
But that wasn’t the main reason Irish writer Donal Ryan returned to the characters of his 2013 novel The Spinning Heart in this year’s Heart, Be at Peace. “I wish I was commercially driven, even just for a day!” he says. But, since he has a job as a lecturer outside writing, he says he doesn’t “write with money in mind”, instead focusing on “getting the story right, making it feel true and real”.
It was actually his late mother who made him do it. “She spent a lot of time at her till in Tesco Nenagh discussing the characters from The Spinning Heart with customers, who were curious about what the characters might have done afterwards,” he tells me. “‘Will you just write a sequel?’ Mam said several times over the years. ‘It’d be easier for all of us!’ I should have done it sooner, though, so she could have read it. But Heart, Be at Peace has her spiritual imprimatur for sure.”
For Colm Tóibín, the 2015 film adaptation of his 2009 novel Brooklyn was a significant factor in his choosing to return to the story. “I saw the film a good few times, and the way Domhnall Gleeson played the part of Jim began to interest me. Normally, in Irish films and plays the heterosexual Irish hero is unreliable, charming, but often dark and brooding,” he says. “Domhnall played Jim as stable, decent, but also gave him a sort of glow. I don’t think I would have written the book that became Long Island without the inspiration I got from Domhnall’s performance in the film of Brooklyn.”
Welsh says that, because his Trainspotting characters were the first ones he wrote, they feel “quite personal to me in a lot of ways”. Ever since writing Trainspotting’s prequel Skagboys (parts of which he wrote before Trainspotting) he never really stopped writing about them, always making notes, until he gets to the point that he thinks “I could write this up as a novel”. That’s what gave rise to Trainspotting’s two existing sequels, Porno, and Dead Men’s Trousers, and now the forthcoming Men in Love.
“When something happens in the world, I always think, ‘What would Begbie think of this, or Renton, or Spud, or Sick Boy?”
Juliette Binoche as Vianne Rocher in the 2000 film adaptation of Chocolat. Photograph: David Brown Productions/Allstar
