The tradition of supplementary fiction dates at least from the fifteenth century, when supplements to the works of Geoffrey Chaucer were generated by the perception that his texts were unfinished or that he had not imposed a sufficiently firm moral closure on them. Robert Henryson famously thought Chaucer hadn’t punished Criseyde enough for her betrayal of Troilus, and set out to remedy the omission in his own Testament of Cresseid. In a more recent example, Emma Tennant’s execrable Pemberly traces the tempestuous married life of Jane Austen’s Darcy and Elizabeth, though in the style of a Neighbours episode.
Born of the Sea by Victor Kelleher
Viking, $29.95 pb, 339 pp
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