Every so often, a novelist returns to a story they walked away from decades ago. They reanimate the characters and send them off to meet readers who have long since grown up, moved house a couple of times, and started taking a keen interest in gardening and guttering. The long-delayed sequel. The follow-up that arrives so late that the original fans now need glasses to read the bloody thing.
As someone who writes in series myself, I find the whole business fascinating and faintly terrifying. Leave a story alone long enough, and the world quietly moves on without you. Announcing a sequel three decades on is a bit like popping out to pick up a takeaway and reappearing during a different monarch’s reign. Here, then, are six stories an author returned to long, long after writing the original.
The Shining to Doctor Sleep: thirty-six years drying out
Stephen King published The Shining in January 1977. Doctor Sleep followed in September 2013, roughly thirty-six years later. Little Danny Torrance, the boy who survived the Overlook Hotel, comes back as Dan: middle-aged, battered by drink, working in a hospice where his flickering “shining” comforts the dying. King had long wondered what becomes of a traumatised child once he grows into a man. The answer, it seems, involves a great deal of cheap lager and a slow crawl towards something resembling peace.
To Kill a Mockingbird to Go Set a Watchman: fifty-five years and a twist off the page
Harper Lee published To Kill a Mockingbird in 1960. Go Set a Watchman arrived in July 2015, a full fifty-five years later, which stands as one of the largest gaps in publishing history. The strange part: Watchman came first. Lee drafted it in the mid-1950s, and her editor, captivated by the childhood flashbacks, coaxed her into rebuilding the whole thing from young Scout’s point of view. That rebuild became Mockingbird. The original manuscript, long assumed lost, resurfaced in late 2014. Set twenty years on, the follow-up reveals an older, harder Atticus, and plenty of readers rather wished it had stayed lost. A sequel that predated its own predecessor. Time travel, of a sort, and I know a thing or two about that.
The Handmaid’s Tale to The Testaments: thirty-four years in Gilead
Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985 and let it sit as a modern classic for thirty-four years before returning with The Testaments in 2019. The sequel picks up fifteen years after Offred’s story trails off, narrated in part by the fearsome Aunt Lydia. Decades of readers had pressed Atwood on the same question about Gilead’s fate. She took her time, then answered it in full.
Catch-22 to Closing Time: Yossarian, thirty-three years on
Joseph Heller gave the world Catch-22 in 1961 and, thirty-three years later in 1994, brought back Yossarian in Closing Time. The great survivor of the war now shuffles around New York, older and mortality-haunted, the absurdity relocated from a wartime airfield to the tail end of the century. Not every reader wanted to watch their favourite anti-hero fret about his prostate, but you cannot fault the man for honesty about how these things go.
Watership Down to Tales from Watership Down: rabbits, a quarter-century apart
Richard Adams published Watership Down in 1972 and waited until 1996, some twenty-four years, before revisiting that field with Tales from Watership Down: nineteen short stories of rabbit mythology and the old warren’s survivors. Somewhere a whole generation who had wept over Hazel as children opened it as fully grown adults, presumably with a rabbit-shaped PTSD.
Less Than Zero to Imperial Bedrooms: the apathetic teenagers hit their forties
Bret Easton Ellis introduced his blank, moneyed Los Angeles teenagers in Less Than Zero in 1985 and caught up with them twenty-five years later in Imperial Bedrooms (2010). Clay, the narrator of both, has become a screenwriter in his forties, and the aimless kids of the first book have curdled into schemers and backstabbers. Growing up rarely looks flattering. Growing up inside an Ellis novel looks positively hazardous.
So why leave it so long?
The reasons tend to rhyme. Some writers fear they cannot recapture whatever the first book had, and would rather leave the magic undisturbed. Some feel the original stands complete and needs no encore. Others simply live their lives, and the ending only reveals itself once the writer has aged into the story they once told from the outside. Occasionally, as with Harper Lee, a lost manuscript surfaces and makes the decision for them.
There is a nervy honesty to making people wait. Return too soon, and you look mercenary. Return too late and half your original audience will require a mobility scooter to visit their local bookshop. Either way, the fact that these follow-ups came at all is the small miracle. If you enjoy the marathon side of the craft, I once wrote about the longest anyone ever took to write a single novel, which makes even a thirty-year sequel gap look positively brisk.
The books I promise not to make you wait fifty years for
I write in series too, though I do my level best not to keep anyone waiting until they need a new hip. If you fancy a story that continues without a half-century interval, start with Beyond Broadhall, where Craig Pelling returns from his weekend in 1986 to a future his meddling has quietly wrecked. The Way We Thunk brings back the strange little therapist Mungo Thunk for a committed pessimist teetering on a railway bridge. And The Fourth Clause picks up Danny Monk’s story once the house on Echo Lane reveals itself as a genuine portal to 2024, and the future makes it very clear it does not enjoy being tampered with. No stairlift required.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the longest gap between a novel and its sequel?
One of the longest belongs to Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird appeared in 1960 and Go Set a Watchman followed in 2015, a gap of fifty-five years. The curious part: Watchman had actually been written first, in the mid-1950s, and only resurfaced decades later.
Why do authors wait so long to write a sequel?
Reasons vary. Some fear they cannot recapture the original’s magic. Some feel the first book stands complete and needs nothing more. Others simply live their lives, and the ending only reveals itself once the writer has aged into the story. Occasionally a lost manuscript turns up and settles the matter for them.
How long after The Shining did Stephen King write Doctor Sleep?
Thirty-six years. The Shining appeared in January 1977 and Doctor Sleep followed in September 2013, catching up with a grown, alcoholic Dan Torrance working in a hospice.
Is Go Set a Watchman really a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird?
Sort of. It reads as a sequel, set roughly twenty years after Mockingbird with an adult Scout returning home. Yet Harper Lee drafted it before Mockingbird, so it predates the very book it appears to follow.
Does Keith A Pearson make readers wait decades for his sequels?
Thankfully not. Keith writes in several series and tends to return to his characters within a year or two, so nobody needs a stairlift to reach the next instalment. Beyond Broadhall, The Way We Thunk and The Fourth Clause all continue earlier stories without a fifty-year interval.