If you want to find out about JK Rowling's new book "Casual Vacancy", Allison Pearson at the Telegraph has a
comprehensive plot summary. This is useful because it has convinced me that it is one of those books I would throw angrily into the wastepaper basket part way through reading it. This passage in the article illustrates the attitude of the author:
When an interviewer from The New Yorker put it to Rowling that there might be strong objections to the idea of young Harry Potter readers being drawn into such material she replied coolly: "There is no part of me that feels that I represented myself as your children’s babysitter or their teacher… I’m a writer and I will write what I want to write."
There you have it. Essentially "I can do what the hell I want." Children will indeed read this horrible book, and be disturbed and confused by it. Perhaps the good that will come out of it is that some of the more intelligent child readers will begin to question what sort of world view was really working in the mind of the author of the Harry Potter books and the "spell" might be broken.
3 comments:
Absolutely superb last sentence, Father! Thanks.
Too bad really. I think part of the problem was she read to many of her press clippings. I thought the last two in the HP series unfocused and over self-indulgent in particular. Too much 'typing' and not enough capitalizing on what she'd set up in 1-5. I was quite disappointed because I thought numbers 3 and 5 in particular had set up many elements which would have been interesting to explore, but she just left too many loose threads along those lines. St. Mungos for instance. Totally wasted.
It sounds like Roald Dahl writing Trainspotting! The book written by anyone else might win awards for its edginess and realism but not by the world's most famous children's author.
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