Recent Rowling Article

Very good J K Rowling article in the Tatler. The only version I could find was from The Leaky Cauldron's files. It went into how her mother's death while Rowling was still writing the first book has been felt in the series as a whole. Death is never far away in the Harry Potter books; Rowling doesn't pull any punches. Good characters die, bad characters die. Facing death becomes inevitable when the only alternative is to sit by and let evil spread unopposed. Yet even with that, Rowling's deaths aren't noble sacrifices as a whole. Characters are killed suddenly and senselessly. Diggery doesn't get a chance to fight back. He isn't killed throwing himself in front of Harry and taking a Killing Curse meant for him. Black's is quick -- the result of a lapse of concentration during a fight. Minor characters are killed off-page, brutally and arbitrarily. They're targeted because they oppose Voldemort, but it seems to be more a matter of luck than of skill who escapes and who dies.

The one jarring sentence in the article is, unfortunately the first one. That sentence, "A tear slowly trickles down JK Rowling's cheek," sounds uncomfortably Rita Skeeterish to me. It reminds me forcibly of the one of the sentences Harry spies being written down during his first interview with her. "Tears fill those startlingly green eyes as our conversation turns to the parents he can barely remember." (GOF, U.S. paperback ed. p.306) It doesn't spoil the article, but it kind of tripped me up until I got into the rhythm of the rest of the piece.

Rowling hadn't wanted to let her mother she was writing a book, probably because she hadn't much hope of getting it published. I think that was the biggest regret -- not that her mother missed all the fame and fortune and adulation. That's a big regret of mine, too. My mother always thought I could write for publication, but while she was alive I hadn't tried. I haven't published a book or an article, but I was published in the New Blood anthology, and that would have thrilled her. I think she would have liked that I was expressing myself here and in blogs too.

But you can't change the past; you just have to go forward and try not to regret what you can't change. And hope there's a way that somehow, somewhere, our mothers are aware of what 's going on and are happy for us.