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J. K. Rowling has come out with a new novel, leaving behind the children’s world of Harry Potter that has won her fantastic acclaim and has made her a millionaire, if not a billionaire. She apparently wants to try to kick up a little dust in the adult literary world. Naturally, this is something of a big literary event.
I never got into Harry Potter myself. Though, always hearing so much about the books, I would sometimes check out the excerpts, the opening pages, and I am always left thinking, “My god, this really is a children’s book. I can’t read this.” Nevertheless, I am still curious about this latest offering.
The reviews are not encouraging, and I am more than a little put off by the fact that I cannot find an excerpt anywhere, not even on Amazon. However, while reading through a heavily negative review by Michiko Kakutani at the New York Times, I came across this spicy nugget:
This is definitely not a book for children: suicide, rape, heroin addiction, beatings and thoughts of patricide percolate through its pages; there is a sex scene set in a cemetery, a grotesque description of a used condom (“glistening in the grass beside her feet, like the gossamer cocoon of some huge grub”) and alarming scenes of violent domestic abuse. The novel contains moments of genuine drama and flashes here and there of humor, but it ends on such a disheartening note with two more abrupt, crudely stage-managed deaths that the reader is left stumbling about with whatever is the opposite of the emotions evoked by the end of the “Harry Potter” series.
And my interest is revived! But why won't they give us an excerpt? Well, I am not itching to lay out twenty dollars and start reading it right away, but I am very, very curious. Maybe more information will come out in the weeks ahead, and maybe an excerpt or two.
======================
ONTD
New York Times
I never got into Harry Potter myself. Though, always hearing so much about the books, I would sometimes check out the excerpts, the opening pages, and I am always left thinking, “My god, this really is a children’s book. I can’t read this.” Nevertheless, I am still curious about this latest offering.
The reviews are not encouraging, and I am more than a little put off by the fact that I cannot find an excerpt anywhere, not even on Amazon. However, while reading through a heavily negative review by Michiko Kakutani at the New York Times, I came across this spicy nugget:
This is definitely not a book for children: suicide, rape, heroin addiction, beatings and thoughts of patricide percolate through its pages; there is a sex scene set in a cemetery, a grotesque description of a used condom (“glistening in the grass beside her feet, like the gossamer cocoon of some huge grub”) and alarming scenes of violent domestic abuse. The novel contains moments of genuine drama and flashes here and there of humor, but it ends on such a disheartening note with two more abrupt, crudely stage-managed deaths that the reader is left stumbling about with whatever is the opposite of the emotions evoked by the end of the “Harry Potter” series.
And my interest is revived! But why won't they give us an excerpt? Well, I am not itching to lay out twenty dollars and start reading it right away, but I am very, very curious. Maybe more information will come out in the weeks ahead, and maybe an excerpt or two.
======================
ONTD
New York Times
