We live in a strange age where art can continue to be made even after its creator has died: the “last Beatles song” that came out last year, Now and Then, was developed from an unfinished John Lennon song by Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, with a bit of help from AI. Some living artists are making preparations for their work to outlive them: Dolly Parton has said she’s planning to leave thousands of songs behind for future producers and songwriters to use, while Abba’s hologram concert Abba Voyage could theoretically carry on for ever. Meanwhile Italian writer Andrea Camilleri wrote the final book in his beloved Inspector Montalbano mystery series with the intention that it would be published after his death, making it clear that no other writer was to pick up where he left off.
Because that is increasingly the norm when writers of beloved book series die: the Ian Fleming estate has asked a number of writers, including Sebastian Faulks, Anthony Horowitz and, most recently, Kim Sherwood, to write James Bond novels, and crime writer Sophie Hannah was asked to continue Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot series. Now Nick Harkaway has decided to continue the legacy of his late father, John le Carré, and has written a new George Smiley spy novel.
Harkaway, author of fantasy and futuristic novels such as The Gone-Away World and Gnomon, was initially full of “eye-watering fear” when he decided to take on his father’s series, he told Alex Clark for this weekend’s Saturday magazine. But his father’s writing voice came to him surprisingly quickly. “When I think about that, it’s obvious,” he says. “I was born in 1972, when he was writing Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He was reading pages of it to my mother in bed in the mornings while I was learning to speak. It’s not just that I’m familiar with the work; it’s that the work is pivotal in how I learned to speak English.”
But why do such “continuation novels” exist in the first place? Isn’t it enough to enjoy the body of work that the author has left behind?
“I can certainly see the appeal for publishers, both in generating more sales and helping to revive interest in an author,” says Guardian crime critic Laura Wilson. “However, it is risky, both for the reputation of the dead author, if the continuation isn’t up to snuff, and for the new author – because a continuation is, more or less, an act of mimicry, and this may not be where his or her particular strengths lie.”
“Also, there’s the challenge of staying true to a character such as James Bond while reflecting the fact that social attitudes have changed enormously since Casino Royale was published in 1953,” she adds.
It’s worth noting that, more often than not, continuation novels are additions to crime or thriller series. We know that this genre is deeply loved – even Karl Ove Knausgård, known for his deliberately prolix autobiographical novels, said in his Books of My Life this week that spy novels are his comfort read.
Continuations work well in this genre “because the plots of these novels tend to be generated by circumstances outside the main character,” Wilson thinks, “in that he or she is given a particular task” – solving a murder or unmasking a spy, for example. “This means that you can, as it were, ‘apply’ the character to any situation you fancy.”
“My own feeling is that continuation novels perform several functions,” says twice Booker prize-nominated novelist William Boyd, who was asked by the Ian Fleming estate to write a James Bond continuation novel, Solo, published in 2013. “One, they keep the name of the author alive. Two, the continuation author’s take may be stimulating. Three, the new novel satisfies the enormous fanbase and, four – let’s not be coy – it’s a way of monetising the stature of the late author’s name before the copyright runs out. Everybody wins.”
Nick Harkaway with his father, John le Carré, in 1979. Photograph: Monty Fresco/Daily Mail/Shutterstock
