Gone With the Wind

I just watched Gone With the Wind. It was the second time in my life, the first being 30 odd years ago either shortly before or shortly after I got married. In the late 70s or early 80s on TV. I remember it was a two night event and was terribly chopped up by commercials.

I had read the book a few years before that in the summer between 9th and 10th grade. It was one of the rare books for which I turned back to page one after turning the last page and started over again.

Oddly, I remember favoring Melanie over Scarlett. I 'got' her. She was closer in spirit to who I thought myself to be at the time. Scarlett reminded me too much of the bullies I contended with throughout my school years and I could not muster sympathy for her or root for her success. But tonight, though I still admired Melanie, I was mesmerized by Scarlett. Her gumption in the face of despair and terror outshown the selfish brat persona I had remembered and I had to admire her for her ability to renounce the culturally expected helplessness of her era's 'ladies' and make her own success by hook or by crook. I'm wishing I had a bit more of Scarlett and a bit less of Melanie in myself now.

During the intermission just before switching to disc 2 I went to the library catalog and ordered the book. And while there I discovered there had been two sequels written in the last twenty years. If ever there was a story--movie or novel--that needed a sequel, it was Gone With the Wind. But how can a sequel written by someone not Margret Mitchel ever do the story justice? I know that Mitchel herself was adamantly opposed to a sequel.

One tells Rhett's story and the other Scarlett's. Rhett Butler's people by Donald McCaig in 2007 and Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley in 1991.

Does anyone know if either of them were any good at all?