Would there be as much discussion / fanfic if AF had stopped at Cricket Term?

[jackmerlin]

Since the readthrough I have been thinking about the series as a whole, because it's the first time I have read all the books in order from beginning to end. It seems to me that the series could have stopped at Cricket Term and existed as a perfectly complete, 'finished' series. It comes to a natural close at that point

Comments

[antfan]

Hmm. I'm not a big reader or writer of fanfic (I keep my distance partly because I'm afraid I'll be Sucked In and never break free) so maybe I'm not the right person to answer this. But I do think CT is a very satisfactory conclusion to most of the strands of the series, and don't read AT or RAH much, so maybe you're right and that's why I'm not actually "desperate for more"?

Patrick/Nicola/Ginty is the one strand that is somewhat unresolved by CT I think, but then I prefer the way that it is left at the end of that book to the way it develops later, in RAH in particular.

[anonymous]

An interesting point of view on the series, but AF herself appears to have not believed that Cricket Term was where it should end, as she did go on for two more books, and by most accounts, at least started another. I think in some ways it is true it is not resolved though, and maybe that is partly why some of the fan fic is written. But sadly with AF no longer with us, there will never be a definite ending. But it does leave people free to imagine Patrick with Ginty, Patrick with Nicola, possibly Patrick deciding more than friendship with Marlow girls is not a good idea, or whatever they want. Lizzzar

[thekumquat]

I think if it had stopped at Cricket Term, Forest would be remembered for a minor school trilogy and otherwise forgotten.
It was Attic Term that reeled me in to the wider issues and probably introduced me to the concept of subtext (who's Rosina? Oh, there's more books? [reads] WTF???). It's still my favourite and I have a soft spot for Patrick.

I do need to re-read RAH and Traitor, not least because the recent AO3 offering inspired me and I realized 8000 words later that it's not Foley who's killed by Peter, which means a significant rewrite...

[jackmerlin]

Just to be clear - I wasn't suggesting that AF should have stopped at CT. I was simply thinking that it's the last two books that leave all the unresolved themes and dangling threads. Perhaps it's the very unfinished nature of the series that keeps the characters so alive for us?

[anonymous]

Yes, I agree with a lot of this - I wish she had finished, as I like the resolutions you get in most books/series. But I suppose you could argue that resolutions in books are an artificial way of getting some kind of made up closure, although they are also something most readers like, and not knowing for sure what will happen to AF's characters makes them seem a little more like real people.
Lizzzar

[nnozomi]

Have you read Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle? Its narrator Cassandra talks about her dislike for what she calls "brick-wall happy endings--I mean, endings where you never think about the characters after the book is finished" (quoting from memory so probably inaccurate, sorry), very much what you're saying. I think she agrees with you and Jackmerlin that closure can end up making a book less interesting for the reader, depending.
For the record, I like happy endings myself, and tend to reassure myself in non-closed situations by thinking "Well, I'm sure Nicola and Esther made it up the next term, or Esther found someone else to be friends with," "Well, I'm sure Cassandra eventually ended up happily married to [redacted]" (in the book above) and so on. But having it not clearly stated by the author does strengthen the sensation of "these things happen because they would happen," not "because the author forced them to do so".
Not very coherent today, sorry...