ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses itself to some questions posed by the existence of novelistic sequels, the reasons why novelists write them, and the reasons why readers desire them. The test case is a pair of fictions by British novelist Julian Barnes, Talking It Over (1991) and Love, etc. (2000) of which the second is a somewhat delayed sequel to the first. A taxonomy of autographic sequels includes the “phantom sequel” – promised but undelivered; the unpromised but nevertheless delivered sequel; the promised and delivered sequel; and the unplanned, or surprise, sequel. Examples of all are given; then the discussion of Julian Barnes and sequelization probes the kind of sequel comprised by Love, etc., and the reasons for its creation, despite the author’s previous objections to sequels. Barnes’s prospects of further sequelization are discussed, and his practice related to the types of sequel previously outlined.
