Rowling's Post-Potter Prose

J.K. Rowling is known the world over as the author of the Harry Potter series.  It’s positively mind blowing to try and calculate the impact of Harry Potter and it has made her one of the richest women in the world, although she did drop off the billionaire list earlier this year due to her charitable donations and the notoriously high British taxes.

Rowling could very easily sit back and live a life of luxury off her Harry Potter money, but that’s not who she is.  And we’re all better off for that.  Rowling has kept busy since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published in 2007, including writing two more novels.

The Casual Vacancy, her first post-Potter adult novel, was published in the fall of 2012 and was greeted by an unimpressed response by critics.  It seemed a lot of critics were harsh in their disappointment while others tried hard to find what they liked in the book.

I was excited to read The Casual Vacancy, regardless of what it was about, because it was written by J.K. Rowling.  Most people felt the same way.  The fact that it was so drastically different from the Potter books didn’t sit well with many.  The Casual Vacancy was never going to be about the grown up world of Harry, Ron and Hermione, it was something totally different.

While reading it, I found myself agreeing with most of the criticisms made against the book.  There was no real protagonist, there actually wasn’t anyone worth rooting for or even liking among the characters.  There was so much cursing, sex, and drug use that I felt at one point she was overdoing it just to prove she could write something decidedly adult.  It was not an easy read.

But I stuck with it because I have such faith in Rowling’s talent.  I believe at this point, everyone knows her back story.  Rowling was a struggling single mother who, by her own words, was as poor as a person could be without actually being homeless.  She was living on what we call welfare here in the US and the first Harry Potter book was turned down by 12 publishers.

I have no doubt that between her time struggling to make ends meet and all the charitable organizations she works with, Rowling has probably seen a lot of what she wrote about in The Casual Vacancy.  The people struggling with money problems, drug use, and neglected children.  She wrote these characters boldly and naked, these are not easily likeable people.  The adults are selfish and narrow minded, the children are rude and running wild. 

The book starts with a man, Barry Fairbrother, who appears to be the only genial person in the town of Pagford, dying, leaving an empty seat on the Parish Council.  The book follows his fellow townsfolk as they scheme to try and win his empty seat.  The town is split between those who supported Barry’s crusade to save The Fields, the government run public housing that borders the town of Pagford, and those who didn’t want Pagford to be responsible for the public housing and the people within.

There is a large cast of characters, both adults vying for the seat and children who had been touched by Fairchild, the local high school’s rowing coach.  Chief among them is Krystal Weedon, a teen who had been close to Fairchild as she excelled on the rowing team.  But her life was a difficult one, raised by a heroin addicted mother in a ramshackle home in The Fields, forced to grow up too quickly as she often had to care for her young brother, Robbie. 

The Casual Vacancy is a dark novel, sometimes darkly funny, sometimes depressing, that shows people at their barest.  Nobody is perfect and even those who seem happy are often not.  You spend the majority of this book waiting for the hero.  Waiting for someone to do something to justify all the time you spend with these unagreeable people.  And then, about three quarters of the way through the book, something happens.  I don’t like to say what because it is big.  It will completely change your thoughts on everything you had just read.  You’ll see these people for who they really are.  It will put everything into perspective for both the characters and the reader.  Everything you thought was important, doesn’t seem so anymore, the priorities of all the people in town, those who were directly affected and those who weren’t, all change.
 

And you suddenly find that person you can cheer for, that person you can like.  She was not somebody you expect to take charge, but she does and you know, in the end, she will succeed and her life will be better.  By the time the book ends, you have hope for the people of Pagford and for the person who steps up.
 

When people asked me what I thought of the book, they always ask with trepidation.  It seems like all they’ve heard are bad reviews and they’re afraid that this author, who had given them one of the greatest series of books ever written, will disappoint them with her new book.  I tell them honestly that it isn’t an easy read, but to please stick with it, because by the end, everything will make sense and you’ll be glad you read it.  I can’t help but feel the reviewers who gave it negative reviews didn’t finish the book. 

The Cuckoo’s Calling is completely different from Harry Potter and The Casual Vacancy. It is know common knowledge that Rowling tried to publish her first crime fiction under a pseudonym, Robert Galbraith, so she could receive nonbiased feedback.  Word was leaked by the friend of a man who worked for Rowling’s former law firm.  She sued and won a substantial amount of money that will be donated to The Soldier’s Charity, the same charity that will be receiving all worldwide publishing royalties from The Cuckoo’s Calling.

The characters in her second post-Potter novel are so well written and the story so compelling, I found it hard to put down.  Rowling’s talent for detail makes it so easy to get swept up into the story and characters. This is a book I am genuinely excited about talking about and recommending to others.

The Cuckoo's Calling is fast paced and enthralling.  It begins with the death of Lula Landry, a world famous supermodel who had fallen to her death from her balcony onto the snow covered road below in the early hours of the morning.  The question is, did she jump or was she pushed?  With a history of mental illness it is believed she jumped, but her older brother, John Bristow, is convinced it was murder.  John goes to Cormoran Strike, a former military police officer turned private eye who left the military after losing his right leg below the knee in Afghanistan.  Newly single and down on his luck, Strike is thrilled when Bristow offers him more money that he could ever dream of to solve the mystery of his sister’s death.

This story is done in the vein of the old fashioned gumshoe mystery.  We meet an incredible cast of characters as Strike searches for the truth, from the wealthy Bristow/Landry family to the fashion designer of whom Lula was a muse to the supermodels and actors Lula hung out with to Lula’s birth mother and the poor woman Lula had befriended when she was getting help for her own mental health problems and so many more.  Strike finds an unlikely partner in Robin Ellacot, a young woman who had just moved to London to be with her boyfriend (now fiancé) and was sent to Strike’s office by a temp company to be his secretary for a week. 

Supposedly, The Cuckoo’s Calling is the first in a series of novels by Rowling, under the name Robert Galbraith.  I hope it is.  Cormoran and Robin make a great team and I look forward to their future adventures.

There will always be people who will compare everything Rowling writes to Harry Potter.  I know I picked up The Casual Vacancy because it was written by the author of the Harry Potter books that I loved so much, but I didn’t compare them, they are entirely different stories with different types of characters written for completely different audiences.  Other than having the same name on their covers, there is absolutely nothing that Harry Potter, The Casual Vacancy, or (J.K. Rowling's name is now on the inside flap) The Cuckoo’s Calling have in common.  And that’s not a bad thing.  I would gladly recommend any of these books to fellow readers.  Not everybody enjoys YA fantasy books or dark novels about everyday life in small town England or mysteries surrounding the murder of a young model, but if you go into these books with an open mind, you won’t be disappointed.