JK Rowling: ‘The worst that can happen is that everyone says, That’s shockingly bad’

Harry Potter sold millions and made her one of the richest women in the world. Now JK Rowling has written her first book for grown-ups. But is the magic still there?

By Decca Aitkenhead

JK Rowling’s new novel arrives with the high drama and state secrecy of a royal birth. Its due date is announced in February, and in April the disclosure of its title, The Casual Vacancy, makes international news. The release of the cover image in July commands headlines again, and Fleet Street commissions a “design guru” to deconstruct its inscrutable aesthetic, in search of clues as to what might lie within. Waterstones predicts the novel will be “the bestselling fiction title this year”. Literary critics begin to publish preliminary reviews, revealing what they think they will think about a book they have not yet even read.

I am required to sign more legal documents than would typically be involved in buying a house before I am allowed to read The Casual Vacancy, under tight security in the London offices of Little, Brown. Even the publishers have been forbidden to read it, and they relinquish the manuscript gingerly, reverently, as though handling a priceless Ming vase. Afterwards, I am instructed never to disclose the address of Rowling’s Edinburgh office where the interview will take place. The mere fact of the interview is deemed so newsworthy that Le Monde dispatches a reporter to investigate how it was secured. Its prospect begins to assume the mystique of an audience with Her Majesty – except, of course, that Rowling is famously much, much richer than the Queen.

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J.K. Rowling writes ‘Casual Vacancy’ for adults

By Deirdre Donahue and Craig Wilson

Once upon a time, J.K. Rowling set children’s imaginations on fire. Can the creator of Harry Potter ignite a similar conflagration for a grown-up audience?

The British author will find out on Sept. 27, when more than 2 million hardcover copies of her first novel for adults hit U.S. bookstores, along with the digital edition. It will be simultaneously released in the U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Germany.

Set in the little English town of Pagford, The Casual Vacancy (Little, Brown, $35) revolves around an election held after a member of the parish council unexpectedly dies. Despite the Miss Marple terrain, press materials describe the novel as “blackly comic … Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war.”

“I expect the world to be ecstatic at the range of her imaginative reach,” predicts Rowling’s American publisher, Michael Pietsch. One of the few to have read the embargoed book, he calls Rowling “a genius, one of the great writers of all time.” Reading the 512-page novel, he says, “reminded me of Dickens because of the humanity, the humor, the social concerns, the intensely real characters.”

No wands, apparently: “This book isn’t Harry Potter,” says Pietsch. “It is a completely different concern.”

But the secrecy surrounding The Casual Vacancy isn’t. As with Harry Potter, there are no advance copies for the media, no early reviews.

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Your Favorites: 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels

Harriet Russell

It’s almost a cliche at this point to say that teen fiction isn’t just for teens anymore. Just last year, the Association of American Publishers ranked Children’s/Young Adult books as the single fastest-growing publishing category.

Which is why we were only a little surprised to see the tremendous response that came in for this summer’s Best-Ever Teen Fiction poll. A whopping 75,220 of you voted for your favorite young adult novels, blasting past the total

And now, the final results are in. While it’s no surprise to see Harry Potter and the Hunger Games trilogy on top, this year’s list also highlights some writers we weren’t as familiar with. For example, John Green, author of the 2012 hit The Fault in Our Stars, appears five times in the top 100.

Selecting a manageable voting roster from among the more than 1,200 nominations that came in from readers wasn’t easy, and we were happy to be able to rely on such an experienced panel of judges.

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Top 10 YA Books That Adults Will Love

By Meredith Borders

Even as a young adult, I never read much Young Adult fiction. But a few years ago my friends started Forever Young Adult, a hilarious site aimed at grown-ups who love YA. Being friends with YA experts means that I always have someone to weed through the dross and recommend (and loan me) the best the genre has to offer. I’m here today to pass on their expertise to you. I’ll leave out the classics (Wrinkle in Time, The Outsiders, Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, Chronicles of Narnia, The Hobbit, etc) because most of us read those back when we were little lit-fiends. Today, I’m going to stick with more recent YA success stories.

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The 50 coolest books ever

Away with thee, Harry Potter

Films you can quote for cheap giggles down the pub; records (vinyl, natch) earn you kudos among a select coterie of like-minded obsessives; but nothing – absolutely nothing – says understated cool (always the coolest cool) like a well-thumbed copy of A Confederacy of Dunces.

Want in on the action? Get yourself down to your local bookstore immediately and get acquainted with the following 50 tomes. Gallons of cool guaranteed.

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Audiobooks for giving

Object lessons: Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

From George Smiley to the complete Harry Potter.

By Sue Arnold

Once the ritual traditions of giving and gorging are over, that quiet, becalmed period between Christmas and New Year is the perfect time for catching up on all the books and programmes you’ve missed during the year. My recommendations for presents and personal indulgence include blockbuster boxed sets whose marathon running times will take you through to next summer, plus a random selection of shorts, single-CD audios for people who prefer to dip.

Best series: The Complete George Smiley (BBC, 21hrs, £80). The award-winning Radio 4 dramatisation of all eight Le Carré books featuring the tubby, bespectacled spymaster with “the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin”. Everyone remembers Alec Guinness’s inscrutable Smiley in the TV version. Simon Russell Beale’s portrayal takes inscrutability to vertiginous new heights.

Best music: Opera Explained (Naxos, 79mins, £5.99). The antithesis of every “Famous operatic arias” and “Best of Verdi” cherry-picking album. Thomson Smillie’s patient, unpatronising analysis of a score of operas on one CD apiece (except for Wagner and Gilbert and Sullivan, who each get two) covers social context, composer’s biog, anecdotes and, of course, cherries.

Best novel: The Sisters Brothers (Whole Story Audio, 9hrs, £17.35). The first western to be shortlisted for the Booker, Patrick de Witt’s quirky modern morality tale about a pair of contract killers in Gold Rush America will make you laugh. It may even change your mind about psychopaths, especially if they clean their teeth.

Best history: A History of the World in 100 Objects (BBC, 25hrs, £23.50). Everyone’s obligatory coffee-table book last Christmas, but remember, it was a radio series, and what made it so memorable were the conversations between British Museum director Neil MacGregor and the experts handling the various artifacts, which have to be heard rather than read. Why does Seamus Heaney looking at a 9th-century Viking helmet and then reading from his own translation of Beowulf immediately conjure up visions of raiders in longships rowing inexorably towards the Northumbrian coast?

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‘Harry Potter’ E-Books Launch Delayed Until 2012

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

The Pottermore creators said that the electronic books said the postponement will allow them to focus on bringing “as many people as possible” to the website.

Harry Potter fans who want to own all seven books from the J.K. Rowling franchise in electronic form will have to wait just a little bit longer.

On Friday, the creators of Pottermore, a Harry Potter website, said that the e-book store has been pushed back until next year, the Associated Press reports. E-book versions of Harry Potter were set to go on sale in October through Pottermore.

In a post, Pottermore management said that registration would be open to everyone at the end of October and that the store would be open in “the first half” of next year.

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Fiction far from farce in 21st century literature

By Danny Wicentowski

James Joyce’s “Ulysses” dares you to try to read it. Thick as a phonebook and infinitely denser, the modernist masterpiece is notorious for its ability to break the will of even the most dedicated literati. While the book’s value was questioned on grounds of obscenity in 1921, the 21st century finds the value of literature itself uncertain in an environment populated by new forms of media.

So why bother with Ulysses? Why bother with fiction at all?

Such was the question that followed the release of President Obama’s summer reading list, which included four works of fiction, such as “The Bayou Trilogy,” a collection by Daniel Woodrell, and “Rodin’s Debutante” by Ward Just. President Bush, by comparison, consistently chose weighty works of history and political theory for his reading list.

Notably, conservative columnist and radio host Michael Medved wrote, “Does it make sense for the president of the United States to carve time out of his busy schedule to read novels?”

Medved implies that a novel — by its very nature — is a waste of time, only meant for “relaxation.” So the question isn’t only whether President Obama should indulge in fiction, but whether anyone should.

Jonah Lehrer, author of “Proust Was a Neuroscientist,” is a firm believer in the value of literature, especially the difficult variety.

“Literature really requires that you do something that’s a little more sophisticated from the perspective of your brain,” said Lehrer, also a contributing writer at Wired magazine.

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Potter Ends With Remarkable High

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By Adam Lerner

So Harry Potter is over and with it, my childhood. After seven books and eight movies, the series is now complete, unless there’s a Broadway debut in store.  As I finished the final film and watche three-dimensional Voldemort’s remains scatter into the crowd — I may or may not have caught a piece — I couldn’t help but brew a deep personal resentment for and discomfort with the peace of the Wizarding world. While Team Evildoer may have taken a heavy blow, you can’t help but wonder what Harry is going to do with all his newly won free time.

2011 has indeed been a poor year for the forces of evil. Just two short months before Voldemort’s cinematic death, Osama bin Laden, another favorite world villain, was finally killed. The world rejoiced, not because his death had any immediate tangible impact on our lives, but because it was a slam-dunk for Team Good Guys.

Why did we love Harry so much? Was it because of Rowling’s stellar writing or the obsessive culture that clung to the series and made it a standard for any young reader? Maybe, but I believe it is something deeper than that.

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Pottermore launches in beta

 | By Charlotte Williams

J K Rowling’s Pottermore site launched yesterday as a beta version for members of the press and the one million fans who registered for early access.

The e-book and audiobook store on the site is among the sections not yet accessible, with it to open when the full launch goes ahead in October.

Each site visitor is given their own username, password and homepage and they then build up a profile as the site enables the user to navigate through the chapters of the seven Harry Potter titles, collecting objects and experiencing original animated “moments”, which give users access to new content from J K Rowling, as well as snippets from the original text.

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