Competition | 6 December 2008

Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition

In Competition No. 2573 you were invited to submit the synopsis of a sequel-that-was-never-written to a well-known novel.

Sequels to books and films have a poor reputation, the assumption being that, with the odd exception (The Godfather: Part II, for example), they will almost certainly fall short of the original. I learned this lesson early having looked forward with rabid excitement to Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which failed to live up to its predecessor.

You were all on sparkling form this week. In John O’Byrne’s follow-up to Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield’s repressed incestuous desire finds its true expression and he marries Phoebe, but lives unhappily ever after. Josh Ekroy resurrects Jude Fawley’s son only to subject him to an even more miserable life than his dad’s (his five children drown themselves ‘coz we woz off our heads on acid’). And in Mike Morrison’s sequel to Emma, our heroine abandons Mr Knightley and takes off with Harriet Martin to live à deux in a Surrey village.

Honourable mentions to Derek Morgan, D.A. Prince, G.M. Davis, and Gerard Benson. The winners are printed below and get £25 each. Brian Murdoch bags the bonus fiver.

Frodo’s Last Ride: vol. IV of Lord of the Rings

After many centuries in the Grey Havens, Frodo becomes bored with composing epics in High Elven, a spurious language invented by a slightly dippy Oxford don and understood, presumably, only by elves. Hijacking a banana-boat, he sails to Middle Earth, accompanied by Gandalf (now styled ‘the Technicolored’) and Legolas, who is tired of being the only gay elf in town and has arranged to meet his lost love, Gimli the dwarf, at the Prancing Pony. Back in the Shire, little time has passed, and Frodo hears how, at Mount Doom, the great ring had landed on a small ledge, followed by an only slightly charred Gollum, who had reclaimed it and escaped.