Coarser in every way than the original, but still an enjoyable read even though it falls heavily on the soap side of things. Scarlett O'Hara is one of the great fictional characters, and if Ripley's depiction of her is more blurred than Mitchell's, distinctly softened around the edges and lacking the edge and interest of the original, I'm still happy to have more of her. Part of the floundering in character, though, is because there's no real foil for Scarlett in the sequel in the same way as there was in Gone with the Wind. I'm not talking about Rhett Butler here, but Melanie Wilkes - Melanie was the other great character of GWTW, and there's no-one so finely drawn in the sequel to define Scarlett further by contrast.

Instead the broader sketches of supporting characters are underlined by the removal from the American South to Ireland, and a rather forced plot about colonialism and Fenian resistance. Scarlett is so defined by Tara, by her Southern setting, that she rather loses clarity by transplantation. It's clumsily done, but a shadow of Scarlett O'Hara is still more entertaining than a lot of the characters out there.