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J.K. Rowling's new book, about a character accused of transphobia, raises eyebrows

Rachel Treisman

J.K Rowling has said publicly that her new book was not based on her own life, even though some of the events that take place in the story did in fact happen to her as she was writing it. Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

J.K Rowling has said publicly that her new book was not based on her own life, even though some of the events that take place in the story did in fact happen to her as she was writing it.

J.K. Rowling, who rose to fame as the author of the Harry Potter series, is known for writing about magical subjects and fantasy worlds. But her latest book bears more than a passing resemblance to reality — and, critics say, not in a good way.

The Ink Black Heart is the sixth installment of Rowling's thriller series Cormoran Strike , which she penned under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. The 1,024-page tome started raising eyebrows as soon as it hit stores on Tuesday.

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Observers noted that the plot appears to mirror Rowling's own experience of taking heat and losing fans for expressing transphobic views in recent years. Rowling has said publicly that the book was not based on her own life, even though some of the events that take place in the story did in fact happen to her as she was writing it.

"Although I have to say when it did happen to me, those who had already read the book in manuscript form were [like] – are you clairvoyant?" Rowling wrote in a Q&A on Galbraith's website . "I wasn't clairvoyant, I just – yeah, it was just one of those weird twists. Sometimes life imitates art more than one would like."

In the book, a popular artist gets harassed for her opinions

The book centers the story of Edie Ledwell, a popular cartoonist who, according to the official description , is "persecuted by a mysterious online figure" — and ultimately found dead — after her cartoon was criticized for being racist, ableist and transphobic (at least partly over a bit involving "a hermaphrodite worm," Rolling Stone reports ).

Why Author J.K. Rowling Is Facing Backlash From LGBTQ Activists

"The book takes a clear aim at 'social justice warriors' and suggests that Ledwell was a victim of a masterfully plotted, politically fueled hate campaign against her," the magazine continues, adding that the character gets doxxed — with "photos of her home plastered on the Internet" — and faces threats of rape and death because of her opinions.

Parts of the story seem to mirror Rowling's experience

Rowling has made her own opinions known, particularly in regards to the transgender community, over the last several years .

She faced backlash in 2019 for publicly supporting Maya Forstater, a researcher who had lost her job over transphobic tweets. The following year, Rowling posted several controversial tweets, including one opinion piece that mocked the term "people who menstruate" ("I'm sure there used to be a word for those people," she tweeted . "Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?"), and published a long statement expressing her concerns with "the consequences of the current trans activism."

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Rowling said in November that she's received death threats. She also publicly accused three activists of doxxing her when they posted photos of themselves holding pro-trans rights signs outside of her house in Scotland, "carefully positioning themselves to ensure that our address was visible," she said.

The activists, who had been demonstrating in honor of International Transgender Day of Remembrance, later deleted the photo and deactivated their accounts because of the amount of transphobic backlash they had received online. Scottish police later investigated the so-called doxxing and determined no crimes had been committed (notably, Rowling's home is a popular tourist attraction, as Them points out ).

Critics say the book is self-serving and "beyond parody"

News of Rowling's book release has taken Twitter by storm, even prompting dueling hashtags – #IStandWithJKRowling and #ICantStandJKRowling .

Critics have decried the book as "hilariously self-persecuting " and " beyond parody ," with some drawing attention to the real-world problems facing transgender people, deriding its length ("500 pages longer than Dune , 300 pages longer than Infinite Jest and 100 pages longer than the Bible," wrote one ) and calling for people to boycott her work.

Lark Malakai Grey, co-host of the queer Harry Potter podcast "The Gayly Prophet" told NPR over email that he finds the situation "deeply embarrassing" for Rowling.

"She has published a 1,000-page self-insert fanfiction where she's the victim—it's the kind of behavior that you'd expect from a petulant teenager, not a grown adult with immense wealth and power," he added. "I have no idea what she expected, but seeing the internet fill with jokes about the book has been an absolute joy after all the harm she has caused my community over the past several years."

Rowling's transphobic comments have lost her many fans

Rowling's stance has alienated many in her fanbase — which includes a large number of LGBTQ people — as well as a slew of prominent Harry Potter cast members: Actors Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint are among those who have condemned her comments and expressed their support for the trans community.

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Rowling was noticeably absent from the Harry Potter 20th anniversary special, a de facto reunion for much of the franchise's cast and crew that aired on New Year's Day 2022. She told Graham Norton's "Radio Show" podcast on Saturday that she was invited to participate in the special but chose not to come because she saw it as "about the films more than the books."

In that same interview, she stressed that she had written her new book before the events of the past year.

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"I said to my husband, 'I think everyone is going to see this as a response to what happened to me,' but it genuinely wasn't," she said. "The first draft of the book was finished at the point certain things happened."

Correction Sept. 1, 2022

A previous version of this story misspelled Grey.

• LGBTQ issues
• transphobia

New Times, New Thinking.

JK Rowling’s The Ink Black Heart is confusing, insular and far too long

The latest Cormoran Strike novel from “Robert Galbraith” weighs 1.25 kilograms – making it heavier than a bag of sugar and just as unpleasant to consume at speed.

By Imogen West-Knights

JK Rowling has written a novel about online trolls. The Ink Black Heart , the latest in her series of Strike novels, which she writes under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, follows the private detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott as they investigate the murder of one of the creators of a popular YouTube cartoon called “Ink Black Heart” – a beloved piece of intellectual property that is becoming associated with online toxicity. Edie Ledwell, the cartoonist, had been the subject of a vicious hate campaign online, particularly at the hands of a user who goes by “Anomie”, a former fan who designed a free game based on a fictional game in the cartoon, which doubles as an anonymous platform for online messaging.

It is easy to draw parallels between the subject of the novel and Rowling ’s own life since the final Harry Potter book was published: in recent years, she has engaged in a significant number of spats online, particularly over her views on the trans rights movement and the UK’s gender recognition laws. So easy, in fact, that Rowling felt she had to address the elephant in the chatroom: saying in an interview that any incidents that mirror episodes in the novel happened after “the first draft of the book was finished” – a statement that implies the existence of an editorial process I find it difficult to believe in, because this book has 1,000 pages. 

Yes, three zeros. More, in fact: there is a coda that begins on the 1,000th page. The book weighs 1.25 kilograms, making it heavier than a bag of sugar and just as unpleasant to consume at speed. I do not think a crime thriller has any business being 1,000 pages long – it is perhaps more than three times the number of pages you would want from this genre. A murder mystery lives or dies on pacing.

I liked the first Strike novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling , though. And like nearly everybody my age, I was a devoted Harry Potter reader. Rowling has more than proved that she can put together a riveting plot, and so I began The Ink Black Heart assuming that, despite its incredible, almost threatening length, it would be a page-turner.

[See also: Don’t use cancel culture and JK Rowling to explain Salman Rushdie’s attack ]

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Unfortunately not. The primary problem with The Ink Black Heart can be seen before you so much as crack it open: it is way, way too long. It takes 600 pages before the two detectives even interview Ledwell’s co-creator and the only witness of the attack that killed her. The book is groaning under the weight of its characters, containing dozens of people both in the real world and the online world of the novel, many of whom go by different online handles and usernames. They are hard to keep track of, and even harder to stay interested in.

And no book should contain this many tweets. Twitter may be very realistically rendered in the novel, but that does not mean you want to read a series of tweets. Twitter , as Rowling would be the first to argue, is awful. In certain sections, the novel is written in the form of brain-melting simultaneous chat-threads lifted from the game Anomie runs, a game that, incidentally, it is hard to imagine anybody being invested in because neither its appeal nor its rules are convincingly explained. The cartoon’s catchphrases are also monumentally annoying, bearing sub-Gollum lingo such as “and now we cuts up mukfluk into smuglik pieces”, which would perhaps be tolerable over the length of your average crime thriller, but again: this book is longer than Moby Dick .

I’d hate to conflate the art and the artist, so here is a neutrally presented list of facts about the book. It is simply a fact that the novel contains a character who goes by the name “Pen of Justice”, writes long blog posts about how one of the cartoon’s characters is transphobic, and blogged on the day of the 2015 general election that to “even consider voting for a party other than Labour meant you were lacking in all basic humanity”. (I’ll leave it up to you to speculate whether this character is ultimately revealed to be a good guy or a bad guy.) It is simply a fact that another character – who is chronically ill, refers to herself as a “spoonie” and is shown to have been reading an article called “10 Tell-tale Signs You Aren’t (Entirely) Cis” – accuses Ledwell of being “violently racist and ableist” for her cartoon. It is simply a fact that some of the most extreme toxicity within the fictional fandom turns out to be associated with actual fascists. And it is simply a fact that Ledwell is accused by one of the book’s villains of creating an anti-Semitic caricature, just as Rowling has been accused of the same with regards to Harry Potter ’s goblin bankers.

I wish I could purely read this book on its own terms – but Rowling has made it difficult to, filling her novel with so many details that read as nods to different online factions caught up in the backlash against her. You can’t help but suspect that Rowling was so invested in these references that she forgot to make the book good. Reading The Ink Black Heart feels like reading an SOS from Strike and Ellacott themselves, held hostage in this sprawling labyrinth of Rowling’s own recent obsession with social media wars. Write what you know, they say, and what Rowling unfortunately knows is what it’s like to have your brain pickled by spending too much time online.

The Ink Black Heart Robert Galbraith Little, Brown, 1024pp, £25

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This article appears in the 14 Sep 2022 issue of the New Statesman, Succession

J.K. Rowling’s transphobic new novel sees her at the mercy of all her worst impulses

In the detective novel Troubled Blood, Rowling spends most of her time explaining why she’s mad at modern feminism.

by Constance Grady

J.K. Rowling’s latest novel made headlines for generating controversy well before its US release date of September 29. That’s because Troubled Blood , the newest installment of the detective series Rowling publishes under the pen name Robert Galbraith, features a serial killer who lures his victims into a false sense of security by dressing as a woman.

Fears of a bad man in a dress are one of the main justifications for anti-trans legislation across the globe. In the US and the UK over the past few years, that’s taken the form of the bathroom bill controversies : Trans people want to be able to use public restrooms and changing rooms that correspond to their gender identity.

But opponents argue that if trans people were allowed to use the public bathrooms that corresponded to their gender identity, women and children will undoubtedly be menaced by sexual predators using this legal loophole to ogle women in their most vulnerable state. In practice, however, US states that have allowed trans people to use the facilities corresponding to their gender have seen no increase in sexual harassment or assault in public restrooms .

Rowling, however, has stated that it is “the simple truth” that allowing trans women to use women’s bathrooms will lead to violent men using those loopholes to attack “natalgirls and women.” She began outlining her views on gender in a series of tweets last fall, then elaborated on them in a long essay published this June . There, Rowling perpetuated a series of outdated myths about trans people while repeatedly stating that she’s not transphobic, because she knows and likes trans people. She just also thinks that trans women aren’t real women, that they’re taking advantage of resources meant for “biological women,” and that they are enabling predatory men to commit violence against those “biological women.”

To be clear, regardless of Rowling’s personal feelings toward trans people, all of the ideas she expressed in her essay are transphobic. They actively seek to take rights away from trans people, and they treat trans identity as something that is up for debate, rather than an intrinsic part of human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity. But Rowling has threatened to sue publications who describe her and her views as transphobic, forcing at least one children’s site to issue a public apology .

So to some critics , Troubled Blood is just the latest sign of J.K. Rowling’s increasingly outspoken and retrograde ideas about gender. Others havecountered that the book contains no trans characters , that detractorswere judging the book without reading it, and that dismissing Troubled Blood before its publication over worries about a trope is cancel culture at its worst. What it would mean to cancel J.K. Rowling, a billionaire with theme park attractions built around her intellectual property, remains unclear. But in any case, Troubled Blood debuted at No. 1 in the UK .

I’ve read all of Troubled Blood ’smany pages, and I can say that this book is transphobic. But it’s also just not very good.

What Troubled Blood is, above all else, is an example of Rowling at the mercy of all her worst impulses.

Troubled Blood is the fifth volume in Rowling’s Cormoran Strike books, a series of noir-inflected murder mysteries. The name of the series comes from their protagonist, a grizzled army police officer-turned-private detective named Cormoran Strike, who solves crimes with his partner/obvious eventual love interest, Robin.

The Cormoran Strike books have never been perfect, but they’re usually fun. The part of writing that Rowling is best at is constructing a mystery, so her whodunnits are always absorbing and twisty. And writing under a (masculine) pen name seems to grant Rowling freedom to be playful and flippant in a way she hasn’t been since the very first Harry Potter novels. (Rowling published the first volume in the Strike series, 2015’s The Cuckoo’s Calling , in genuine anonymity. She was unmasked a few months after the book came out, but she’s continued to use her Robert Galbraith pen name for all the books in the series that have followed.)

But Troubled Blood is not fun, and it’s not playful. It feels bloated and resentful, turgid with an ethos of grim duty. It’s the writing of someone who feels she has no choice but to bring some home truths to you, the reader, and damn the consequences.

Troubled Blood also reads like nothing so much as astylisticsequel to Rowling’s incredibly boring 2012 novel Casual Vacancy .

Casual Vacancy was a dour class satire that seemed to be animated most strongly by Rowling’s desire to be taken seriously as an author of literary fiction for adults. Troubled Blood seems to be animated most strongly by Rowling’s desire to share her political opinions on feminism and other gender issues with the world.

It features Strike and Robin setting out together to solve the disappearance of one Margot Bamborough, a feminist doctor who vanished from the world in 1974. The police strongly suspected that Margot was abducted by the serial killer Dennis Creed (the one who wears women’s clothes), but they were never able to solve the case. And now,40 years later, Margot’s daughter Anna — a lesbian, Rowling notes with an air of triumph, as if to say, see, she’s not homophobic — has hired Strike and Robin to try to bring her closure on the mystery once and for all.

Over the course of the year-long investigation that ensues, Strike and Robin manage to establish the following: Fourth-wave feminism , with its Slut Walks and pro-porn stance, is nothing but a bunch of idiotic children having airy, academic discussions about words, while enabling the sexual assault of women and the sex trafficking of children.

In contrast, Margot’s brand of ’70s second-wave feminism was correct and righteous, except for its lamentable pro-choice stance. (All sympathetic characters in Troubled Blood , except for poor misguided Margot, are pro-contraception but anti-abortion.) Moreover, women are all bound together by their biological destiny, which leaves them in danger of being victimized by predatory men. And the most dangerous predator of all is the predator who cloaks themselves in femininity.

This final category of dangerous predators includes Creed the serial killer, who is obsessed with women’s clothing. Creed wears a wig and a women’s coat and lipstick to abduct his victims, because his disguisemakes the drunk women he targets perceive him first as another woman and then as a harmless drag queen. But his interest in cross-dressing isn’t purely utilitarian. He also steals trophy garments from his victims and masturbates into them.

“I felt I stole something of their essence from them,” says Creed of his penchant for taking women’s underwear, “taking that which they thought private and hidden.” ( Per Rowling’s Galbraith website , Creed is loosely based on two real serial killers. Per the Guardian , both of them stole women’s clothes from their victims, and one of the two may have worn them, although the evidence there seems to be fuzzy.)

But there are other predators besides Creed in this most dangerous category of deceptive femininity, and one of them manages to fool Strike. “Like the women who’d climbed willingly into Dennis Creed’s van,” Strike muses of this villain at the end of Troubled Blood , “he’d been hoodwinked by a careful performance of femininity.”

This particular predator who manages to best Strike is cis. But within the world of Troubled Blood , it’s this predator’s cold-blooded and inauthentic performance of femininity that makes them monstrous. And in her nonfiction writing, Rowling has strongly suggested that she believes trans women are cold-bloodedly performing a gender identity that does not truly belong to them, and that, in the process, they are stealing away resources that exist to help what Rowling calls “biological women” cope with the world’s misogyny.

In Troubled Blood , the overt performance of gender is done with an eye to deceive, to misdirect, to harm. Cis women may experiment with their femininity — there’s a recurring motif that sees Robin test driving different perfumes as she decides what kind of woman she wants to be in the wake of her divorce — but men who take an interest in femininity are dismissed even by open-minded Robin as “camp.” Meanwhile, the good gay man who Robin lives with is clean-cut enough to get an acting job playing a straight army vet. Anna the good lesbian is non-threateningly feminine, by which Rowling usually means pretty. (When Rowling writes a woman in touch with her masculine side, the result tends to look like Harry Potter’s wicked Aunt Marge.)

And anyone in this book who wields their gender across boundaries with deliberate intent is a monster.

All of these political ideas are what Troubled Blood is, broadly speaking, “about.” They are where the narrative tension lies, where the juice of the book is. But Troubled Blood is also ostensibly a murder mystery, and the murder plot provides the skeleton from which the political ideas are hung.

So is it a good murdermystery? Not really. It is way, way, way too fucking long.

Rowling’s always had a tendency to go long and sprawling whenever the pressure is on. The Harry Potter books turned into doorstoppers with Goblet of Fire , right at the time they’d become such a phenomenon that the midnight release parties were starting. And Troubled Blood , which comes just as Rowling is beginning to speak more and more publicly about her views on gender, is even longer — it clocks in at a hefty 927 pages, with a plot stretchingout across a full year.

Within that year, Strike and Robin sift their way through innumerable red herrings. Ordinarily, this is a part of plotting at which Rowling excels; she’s very good at flashy authorial sleight of hand,directing the reader’s attention this way while she seeds the information that will turn out to be vital just where you’re not looking. But in this case, the red herrings pile on so heavily and for so long that they begin to feel meaningless. There’s no pleasure to be had in trying to figure out what’s worth paying attention to and what can be discarded, because there’s just more information than any reader could possibly hold on to.

I began to feel unpleasantly reminded of that part of Deathly Hallows that turns into a long, sad, pointless camping trip where nothing happens: Are we really just checking every random tree in this forest for clues? That’s how we’re going to solve this one?

In a way, the plotting in Troubled Blood is even less satisfying. While the second half of the Harry Potter series is bloated, there’s still pleasure to be had in those books from all the genre-blending Rowling is doing. When the mystery fails, the fun of the magic and the friendships and the boarding school coziness can take over. Maybe you don’t particularly care about where Voldemort’s Horcruxes are, but there’s still magical camping and teen angst and wizarding revolutionary radiosto be had, right? Maybe you’re getting distracted by the frankly wild ethics of the house-elves and their slavery, but boy, that Marauder’s Map sure is a blast, right?

In Troubled Blood , when the mystery falters and you aren’t taken by the political ideas animating it, what’s left for you to care about is the long slow-burn romance between Robin and Strike. And I do more or less want Robin and Strike to be together, in the same way I sort of vaguely wanted Ron and Hermione to be together but never bothered over it much. I definitely don’t care about Robin and Strike one-thousand-pages-of-refusing-to-talk-about-feelings much. At this point, with both of them single and both of them gazing endlessly at each other, what is even keeping them apart anymore? It’s exhausting just to contemplate.

There’s a plotline in the Cormoran Strike books that I’ve been thinking about ever since Rowling first began to talk about trans issues in public.

Other critics have already discussed the way she treated trans women in the second volume of the series, The Silk Worm . In that book, the two trans women Strike meets in the course of his investigation are ostensibly sympathetic characters, but Strike treats them as mockable. When one of them isn’t forthcoming with the information he wants, he casually threatens her with prison rape.

But what’s haunting me is a subplot from the series’s third volume, Career of Evil .

In Career of Evil , Strike’s investigation leads him to a subculture built around people who want to become physically disabled. On hidden forums, they discuss the operations they plan to get in order to manifest the disabilities they believe they already spiritually possess, and they complain bitterly that the rest of the world doesn’t understand their plight. Does anyone think they would choose to live like this, with such inaccessible and easily mocked desires? Don’t people understand that they were born with these wishes, that these desires are an intrinsic part of their identity?

Strike, who lost a leg in the war, takes this group’s obsession personally. He is incensed and offended by them. How dare they try to playact at an identity which became his so painfully, at such great cost? How dare they try to appropriate his own personal, private pain?

He has lunch with two people from the forum, and they rudely force him to pay while ordering the most expensive options on the menu. One of them is in a wheelchair. Strike at last loses his patience and pushes her out of the chair, only to find that she can walk just fine without it.

I don’t know what’s going on in J.K. Rowling’s mind or how she sees the world. But she writes about trans people the way Strike thinks about this particular subculture: as people appropriating a disability — and Rowling does write about womanhood, and its attendant dangers, as if it were a disability —that is rightfully hers. And that idea is becoming more and more central to every book she writes.

I don’t know what to do with J.K. Rowling anymore. I don’t know what anyone should do with her and her books.

I don’t believe that it’s sustainable or valuable or even really possible to ask every author you follow to enact some sort of ideologically pure, progressive worldview in every book they write. Most readers, I think, would agree with me on that . That’s part of why so many readers stuck with Rowling despite the politics embedded in the subtext of the Harry Potter novels, which have always been centrist at best , and through the increasing crankiness of the Cormoran Strike series.

I don’t think that you have to throw away the Harry Potter series to prove you’re a good person. I don’t know if it’s even possible to avoid those books: They’re so embedded into the grid of pop culture by this point that they feel like a utility, like an electric company. How do you avoid electricity every single day without becoming a hermit? How do you choose to throw out a series you grew up on, that you built beloved childhood memories around?

Every reader has to have their own dividing line between what they are willing to work with and what they are not. Every reader has to choose the way they will approach a text , and what they’re going to take out of it and what they’ll leave behind. And that’s a choice you have to make for yourself.

• What do we do when the art we love was created by a monster?

I’ve written positively about the Cormoran Strike books before, despite what happened to the trans women in book two and that bizarre trans-disability subplot in book three, and despite that ongoing thing where Rowling always treats fat people as inherently grotesque and probably evil. I thought the mysteries were fun, and I found it easy to ignore the politics. That was a choice I was used to making after growing up on Harry Potter , and because I am a thin cis non-disabled woman, it was easy for me to make that choice without thinking too hard about it.

But I can’t ignore the politics of Troubled Blood , and I don’t think that’s just because of all of the essays and tweets Rowling’s written over the past year. I think that’s because the politics are the only part of Troubled Blood she really cares about, and that shows in the writing.

So here is what I do know.

Troubled Blood is a book in which aesthetics have been rendered subordinate to politics. There is no “there” there besides Rowling’s political ideas. And those ideas are reactionary and hateful.

I don’t see anything left in this book worth sticking around for.

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The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith, review: JK Rowling’s stylish but sexist online trolling thriller

The latest cormoran strike novel involves superfans piling onto a creator, in a storyline that echoes the backlash against the author in real life.

JK Rowling has in recent years found herself at the centre of controversy after sharing her views on trans rights , and there are some very relevant parallel situations wrapped up in her latest novel’s strong, page-turning plot.

This is the sixth instalment of Rowling’s series about London private detective Cormoran Strike and his business partner Robin Ellacott, which she writes under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. They are solid private eye thrillers with painstaking enquiries and good clues (cluing was one of the parent-friendly pleasures of Rowling’s Harry Potter books).

The Ink Black Heart begins with a classic literary Private Investigator trope – a troubled young woman, Edie, comes to Robin and Strike’s agency, but they can’t help her. A short time later she is found dead. Edie had been the co-creator of a hugely successful YouTube animation connected to a computer game – this Gothic concept, the Ink Black Heart of the title, is both convincing and genuinely creepy. Our investigators must find out if the mastermind in charge of the game is guilty not only of bullying, but of murder.

It is a very long book – more than 1,000 pages – and while it is readable, it does not sustain that length. Presumably no-one can tell such a successful author to cut out 250 pages. Long sections are devoted to group chats laid out side by side: many characters have a given name and an online name, and we are supposed to be invested in matching them up correctly, but it is hard to keep track.

The author gives an even-handed portrayal of how superfans can pile onto a creator, in a storyline that bears unmistakable echoes of the backlash against Rowling in real life. She doesn’t imply that the critical fans are right, but she demonstrates their thinking well.

And then she zooms out to real life and we realize that perhaps being very rich means Rowling doesn’t know about other aspects of the modern world. Everyone prints out documents for each other, rather than sending them online.

There’s the “famous” private detective (how many can you name IRL?); the idea that sharing flirty texts with someone will bring on massive press coverage and be grounds for divorce; the belief that buying a flat in London is like booking a holiday (choose flat, pay for it, save the date for moving).

And there is a problem with Cormoran Strike himself. He’s rude, violent and doesn’t understand women. Robin is entirely reliant on Strike for praise and affirmation – we might as well be back in a 50s film. There is a sneaking suspicion that (of all unexpected things) this book would not pass the Bechdel Test – in other words, women characters do not have serious conversations with each other about anything except men.

And the author sees no connection between the misogyny of the online trolls, and Strike’s own misogyny, which she attempts to show as understandable and almost endearing: “‘I was just about to [call you]’ said Strike, wondering how many more women he was going to have lied to before the day was through.”

And yet the book is undoubtedly entertaining and often funny: “Well he’s Dutch,’ said Katya, as though this explained everything”. There’s a strange charm in the way just about every character behaves badly or stupidly, and Rowling keeps the story rattling along. The reader needs only to bury a few doubts and questions regarding the plot and the world it plays out in, in order to enjoy another ripping yarn from the queen of stylish fantasy.

The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith is published by Sphere, at £25

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J.K. Rowling on the Magic of ‘Things’

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By J.K. Rowling

• Dec. 24, 2021

I own a cuddly tortoise sewn by my mother, which she gave me when I was 7. It has a floral shell, a red underbelly and black felt eyes. Even though I’m notoriously prone to losing things, I’ve managed to keep hold of that tortoise through sundry house moves and even changes of country. My mother died over 30 years ago, so I’ve now lived more of my life without her than with her. I find more comfort in that tortoise than I do in photographs of her, which are now so faded and dated, and emphasize how long she’s been gone. What consoles me is the permanence of the object she made — its unchanging nature, its stolid three-dimensional reality. I’d give up many of my possessions to keep that tortoise, the few exceptions being things that have their own allusive power, like my wedding ring.

The most valuable thing I ever lost, at least in a strictly monetary sense, was a pair of spectacular diamond earrings I won many years ago at a charity ball auction. Though very beautiful, my new clip-ons were heavy and turned out to be exceptionally painful to wear, so tight they made my earlobes throb. I wore them to a formal event in London and found them so uncomfortable I discreetly removed them and stowed them in my evening bag. The following day, having flown back to Scotland, I opened my suitcase and they were nowhere to be found; irrevocably lost.

I put those departed earrings into my new children’s book, “The Christmas Pig,” which is a story of objects lost and found, of things beloved and things unregretted. I made my lost earrings grand and snooty, as befitted objects that demanded the wearer suffer for their beauty. When they reach the Land of the Lost, where the hero must go to rescue his most beloved toy, my earrings are angry that they aren’t treated with the respect they think they deserve. They soon find out that being made of diamonds counts for very little in the strange world where human-made objects go when lost, because a thing’s importance there depends on how much it’s truly loved.

There can be a strange magic in human-made things. Not in all of them: not in plastic bottles or Q-Tips or batteries; but in those that are interwoven with our pasts, with our homes, with our great loves. These are things that have been mysteriously imbued with humanity — our own or other people’s.

The magic of “things” often goes unnoticed until they break or are lost. We have favorite mugs and tea towels, comforting in their familiarity and utility; we treasure the lopsided objects our children made for us in nursery school, and we may still own those toys that soothed us when we were tiny. “The Christmas Pig” was inspired in part by one of those achingly necessary toys without whom sleep is impossible: a cheap cuddly pig around eight inches tall, with a belly full of plastic beans, that belonged to my son, David.

David was so attached to that pig, but so prone to losing it, that I became scared it would one day be lost and never found again. I therefore bought an identical replacement and hid it. David was 3 when he went rummaging in the cupboard where I’d stowed his pig’s twin and took it out, slightly confused. He declared it to be his pig’s brother and kept both of them. They’re both still with us, though their names are different from the pigs’ names in the story. Only David’s habit of hiding his beloved pig, then forgetting where he put it, is taken from real life.

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JK Rowling’s new book might be proof she spends too much time online

It is easy to draw parallels between the subject of the novel and Rowling’s own life since the final Harry Potter book was published.

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JK Rowling has written a novel about online trolls. The Ink Black Heart , the latest in her series of Strike novels, which she writes under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, follows private detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacourt as they investigate the murder of one of the creators of a popular YouTube cartoon called “Ink Black Heart” – a beloved piece of intellectual property that is becoming associated with online toxicity.

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J.K. Rowling’s New Book Just So Happens to Feature a Character Persecuted Over Transphobia

By Cheyenne Roundtree

Cheyenne Roundtree

Although J.K. Rowling ’s Harry Potter series was rooted in fantasy and make-believe, the author seems to be drawing inspiration from something a little more realistic for her latest book: her own life. 

Rowling’s new novel, The Ink Black Heart — part of her crime-thriller series Cormoran Strike  and penned under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith — involves a storyline that appears to mirror Rowling’s public downfall after she continually made statements that have been widely condemned as transphobic.

Rowling liked tweets that described trans women as “men in dresses,” mocked an opinion piece that used the term “people who menstruate,” backed activist Maya Forstater after she was fired for her transphobic tweets, and penned a lengthy statement in June 2020 about the reasons she was “worried about the new trans activism.”

In her new book, Rowling introduces readers to Edie Ledwell, a creator of a popular YouTube cartoon who sees internet trolls and her own fandom turn on her after the cartoon was criticized as being racist and ableist, as well as transphobic for a bit about a hermaphrodite worm.  

The creator is doxxed with photos of her home plastered on the internet, subjected to death and rape threats for having an opinion, and was ultimately found stabbed to death in a cemetery. The book takes a clear aim at “social justice warriors” and suggests that Ledwell was a victim of a masterfully plotted, politically fueled hate campaign against her. 

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“I had written the book before certain things happened to me online,” she continued. “I said to my husband, ‘I think everyone is going to see this as a response to what happened to me,’ but it genuinely wasn’t. The first draft of the book was finished at the point certain things happened.” 

So far, critics aren’t buying her explanation, with The Sunday Times and The Telegraph both pointing out the obvious connection and giving the novel bleak reviews.

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J.K. Rowling's novel The Ink Black Heart reportedly features character canceled online for being transphobic

"Sometimes life imitates art more than one would like," says the Harry Potter author, who has been outspoken about her views on the trans community.

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at  Entertainment Weekly  with over five years of experience covering the latest in entertainment. A proud Kingston University alum, Emlyn has written about music, fandom, film, television, and awards for multiple outlets including MTV News,  Teen Vogue , Bustle, BuzzFeed,  Paper Magazine , Dazed, and NME. She joined EW in August 2022.

It doesn't take a great pair of detectives like Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott to figure out that J.K. Rowling 's latest novel may be a case of art imitating life.

The Harry Potter creator's latest novel, The Ink Black Heart — the sixth installment in her ongoing crime series which she pens under the name Robert Galbraith — was released Tuesday, and it reportedly contains a storyline that echoes events from Rowling's own life.

In the novel, a popular YouTube content creator named Edie Ledwell is met with a wave of backlash online after her work is deemed racist, ableist, and transphobic. As a result, the character was "doxxed with photos of her home plastered on the internet, subjected to death and rape threats for having an opinion, and was ultimately found stabbed to death in a cemetery," reports Rolling Stone .

Throughout the novel, Rowling "takes a clear aim at 'social justice warriors' and suggests that Ledwell was a victim of a masterfully plotted, politically fueled hate campaign against her," the outlet also notes.

If any of that sounds familiar, it's because Rowling herself has been embroiled in online controversy surrounding her continuous remarks targeting the trans community. The author — who penned a lengthy June 2020 essay in which she shared her thoughts on trans issues and being labeled a 'TERF' (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) — has a history of writing divisive tweets and supporting fellow celebrities who've been accused of making anti-trans comments.

Rowling's views have been rebuked by both the Harry Potter fandom and multiple members of its film franchise's cast, including its very own Golden Trio: actors Daniel Radcliffe , Rupert Grint , and Emma Watson .

Still, on the blog The Rowling Library , Rowling maintained that any similarities between her own life and The Ink Black Heart are just coincidence. "I have never created a book — and this book certainly isn't created from my own experience — you know, with a view to talking about my own life," she wrote. "That doesn't mean, of course, that your own life experience isn't in the book."

Rowling did acknowledge, however, that "a couple of the things that happened in this book have since happened to me" since she began writing it.

"I would like to be very clear that I haven't written this book as an answer to anything that happened to me," she continued. "Although I have to say when it did happen to me, those who had already read the book in manuscript form were, 'Are you clairvoyant?' I wasn't clairvoyant, I just – yeah, it was just one of those weird twists. Sometimes life imitates art more than one would like."

The Ink Black Heart is out now.

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• J.K. Rowling supports Bette Midler and Macy Gray after they're accused of making transphobic comments
• J.K. Rowling posts lengthy defense of trans stance, says she's a sexual assault survivor
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Troubled Blood: A Review of the new JK Rowling novel vis a vis Transphobia (SPOILERS)

I liked it. Mostly for the main characters, Strike and Robin. I've never found the mystery aspect of these novels to be as well done as the characterizations.

The male character who dresses as a woman to "put people at ease" before abducting them does so only once, I think -- and the detectives are mislead imagining he's done it again (it was not him that committed the crime they are investigating. He is a Red Herring. In fact, the murderer is a "biological" woman).

I think this was the grounds for labeling the entire book transphobic, but while I agree with others who have said it's not a particularly well-timed or original plot point, it also isn't as big a part of the story as someone who hasn't read the book might be lead to believe. You'd have to stretch pretty far to find any genuine transphobia in this book; there aren't any trans characters, to begin with. There are three gay characters, all of whom are treated with respect.

What I DID note was a recurring theme of "what women have to endure" -- being frightened at night, being leered at, being treated as inferior to men even when they are in a higher position, etc. I noted these things a good deal more in this book than in the other Strike books, although I can't tell if that's because this was done on purpose or because I was more keen to notice these themes than I have in reading previous books. Stretching and extrapolating, one might imagine that Rowling was attempting to make the point that "women have to go through a lot in their lives that is unique to them, and someone who transitions in adulthood hasn't had the same lived experience." But that's a bit of reaching.

I imagine this might infuriate some of you, but hey - I read the book so you wouldn't have to. Although, if you like detective novels, this isn't a bad one.

‘More Fuel to the Fire.’ Trans and Non-Binary Authors Respond to Controversy Over J.K. Rowling’s New Novel

T he last 48 hours have been full of conflicting emotions for Marieke Nijkamp. A New York Times bestselling author, Nijkamp’s new novel, a YA thriller titled Even If We Break , was published Tuesday. It’s Nijkamp’s third novel, and their first to include a non-binary protagonist, which makes the book “very special” to them, as Nijkamp is a non-binary, disabled person. “Mainly I want to reflect the world that I see and live in and am a part of,” Nijkamp says. “I think fiction doesn’t do that enough as it is.”

One example of fiction they feel is unlikely to do that: J.K. Rowling’s new novel, Troubled Blood, also publishing on Tuesday. It quickly faced criticism for allegedly leaning into portrayals of trans people as villains.

...I have to say, the irony here is rich: Basically JK Rowling is posing as a man (Robert Galbraith) to write a novel about a man who poses as a woman to kill people. PROJECTING MUCH?!?! — Julia Serano (@JuliaSerano) September 14, 2020

I know a lot of you who follow me probably share some of the fears around the myth about "men who dress up as women to hurt women". If I wasn't trans I suspect I would too. But I ask you to look inside your heart and question what is really happening here https://t.co/cdYE2TKmkt — Paris Lees (@parislees) September 14, 2020

Nijkamp, who says they’ve mostly tried to ignore Rowling’s previous comments on trans issues, found the controversy impossible to avoid this week. The juxtaposition was a painful one. “We’re generally not perpetrators of violence, we’re victims,” Nijkamp says. “I can’t imagine going back and explaining to my teenage self, ‘Hey, this author you love so much blatantly hates people like you.”

Troubled Blood is the fifth in a series featuring the private detective Cormoran Strike, which Rowling, a cisgender woman, penned under the male pseudonym Robert Galbraith. In an early review published on Sunday, British newspaper The Telegraph called Troubled Blood “a book whose moral seems to be: never trust a man in a dress,” citing a plotline featuring a male serial killer dressing up in women’s clothing to commit murders.

A subsequent review from The Guardian describes this character as “just one of many suspects” in the novel’s primary narrative, however; while the killer is apparently written to fetishize lingerie, he uses a stolen women’s coat and a wig solely as a disguise to aid his crimes. The review adds that, “he is not the main villain, nor is he portrayed as trans or even called a ‘transvestite’ by Rowling.”

Still, given Rowling’s previous comments on transgender people and gender identity , the plotline is “disappointing, but not surprising,” says Mason Deaver, author of I Wish You All the Best . The novel, Deaver’s debut, follows the journey of a character coming out as non-binary, and their newly-forged friendships along the way. Writing, Deaver says, is a way to create what would have mattered to them as a child.

They are concerned about the impact of Rowling’s latest work, particularly on those who are trans fans of Harry Potter and had previously admired her work. “I think the harm it’s going to do to them is tragic,” they say.

Trans and non-binary writers believe that narratives relying on transphobic tropes have a harmful impact on their community, and reinforces both transphobic sentiments and misinformation at large. As outlined in this year’s Netflix documentary Disclosure , which analyzed transgender representation on screen, narratives of mentally ill men dressing in women’s clothing and committing violence towards women have long existed in popular media, like the films Psycho and Silence of the Lambs .

“It might not seem obvious at first, but it’s very harmful to portray that being trans adjacent is somehow connected to your mental health,” says Deaver. “I think for the people who hate us, or don’t like us, it’s going to help add more fuel to the fire .”

It’s not the first time that Rowling has been criticized for her treatment of trans issues within her fiction writing. As journalist Katelyn Burns noted in a review of The Silkworm , another of Rowling’s books published under the Galbraith moniker, a trans character’s appearance was also described using problematic stereotypes . And Rowling’s choice of pen name has also been subject to controversy—Robert Galbraith Heath was the name of a mid-20th century anti-LGBTQ conversion therapist . (Rowling has previously said that the name was a conflation of her political hero, Robert F. Kennedy, and a childhood fantasy name ‘Ella Galbraith’.)

For many authors, the focus on trans characters in Rowling’s work detracts from what they see as the authenticity—and inclusivity—their writing can provide. Fiction should reflect the world we live in and speak to the full experience of life that doesn’t solely focus on identity or on traumatic experience, says Lizzie Huxley-Jones, a non-binary autistic author of children’s fiction living in London. “I want to put stories out there that feature trans and disabled kids, that aren’t specifically about them experiencing transphobia or ableism, or their family learning to love them and come to terms with who they are. I want to make a space for people to see a facet of themselves that’s also safe and comforting, an escape. We need that right now.”

Read more: I’m a Nonbinary Writer of Youth Literature. J.K. Rowling’s Comments on Gender Identity Reinforced My Commitment to Better Representation

That sense of escapism is something Rin Chupeco, a non-binary YA author based in Manila, also weaves into their sci-fi and fantasy novels. “I’ve always felt, in many ways, trapped within my own body, and being able to write about fantastical worlds with magic, dragons and demons always feels freeing” they say.

And the attention focused on uplifting their work amid controversies has felt conflicting at times. “We want to be remembered for our books, and not because a rich white author chose to attack us,” says Chupeco. “It gets really tiring to only be remembered if someone else does something to make it terrible for us. This is not to say I don’t appreciate the support, but at the same time, it’s exhausting to be constantly put through this specific loop, where we’re only remembered when someone does something to us, and then forgotten by the time it blows over.”

For Nijkamp, who is spending Tuesday celebrating publication day, the feelings are similarly complicated. “It’s great to see that people are taking this as a jumping off point, but I don’t necessarily want a transphobic person to say and do stuff for my work to be noticed.” Over the last day, Nijkamp has had several readers reach out and express excitement about feeling represented in their work, but hopes that the energy is more long-lasting, and that cis authors too take responsibility for making their work more inclusive.

“I don’t think that I would have gotten to the realization that I am non binary without fiction, and without fiction for young people in particular,” Nijkamp explains. “Ideally figuring out what it means to be me, or what it means to be you shouldn’t be this much of a struggle. What I’m hoping for in response to this entire situation is that in raising awareness of the work of trans and non-binary authors, readers will be able to not just find hatred in books, but also find welcoming.”

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We asked a non-binary person to review the new JK Rowling book. They had a lot to say

• Sep 28 2023
• Written by Maggie Baska
• Save for later

JK Rowling’s latest book contains fatphobia, ablest slurs and is hooked on a thinly-veiled metaphor for trans people and allies. (Credit: Getty / Little, Brown Book Group)

If you thought JK Rowling’s previous book in her  Cormoran Strike  series was an unsubtle nod to anti-trans bigotry, the latest instalment really said: “Hold my beer.”

The Running Grave  is the seventh novel in the author’s thriller-mystery series, named after its main character, which she writes under her very public pseudonym Robert Galbraith. 

The previous story,  The Ink Black Heart , looked at how a public figure was “cancelled” for being anti-trans. It didn’t take a great pair of detectives to figure out the novel was a case of art imitating life as Rowling herself has complained about  being doxxed  and  threatened  for her views on the lives of trans people. 

And there’s much more of that in her latest title.

The new book follows sleuthing duo Strike and Robin Ellacott as they help a father worried because his autistic son has joined a religious cult, which touts itself as being inclusive but shames and targets anyone who attempts to speak out against it. 

It is almost openly mimetic of JK Rowling’s experience as it paints people like her, who are just worried about “vulnerable” folks, as victims of a relentless group that is ostensibly based on equality, diversity and inclusion. 

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The father in the novel is described as the “patron of several charities” concerning education and child welfare, who has a “reputation for intelligence and integrity”. 

It reads blithely like Rowling describing herself because she founded children’s charity Lumos, and she has  positioned herself  as a champion of women’s rights and child protection. 

It’s decided that Robin will go undercover to infiltrate the cult, posing as a new recruit. To attract the attention of recruiters, she dyes her hair blue and says her wedding was called off.

It’s a not-so-subtle nod to how conservatives have associated people who have blue hair with gender-non-conformity and self-expression. There’s  even a meme , which has been reclaimed by LGBTQ+ people online, mocking those with “blue hair and pronouns” – aka trans people and their allies. 

The details of the cult are horrible, with members forced to do manual labour, starved, subjected to physical punishment and sexually exploited by higher-level cultists and leaders. 

This does  bear a resemblance to real-life cults , which Rowling captures relatively well. 

But it’d be remiss if we didn’t extrapolate the beliefs of this “dangerous cult” and the events in  The Running Grave,  to see how they truly mirror Rowling’s public downfall as a result of her controversial statements. 

First off, many right-wing pundits pushed  harmful grooming claims  about trans people and lambasted the LGBTQ+ community more broadly for allegedly attacking individuals for sharing anti-trans beliefs. 

For example, Tucker Carlson and online group Libs of TikTok described the LGBTQ+ community as an  “extremely poisonous cult  [that] brainwashes” people.

Kathleen Stock, who resigned from her role at the University of Sussex after students called to have her sacked over her trans-exclusionary views, has written at length in newspapers and spoken on TV about being  villainised  by trans people and allies. 

Elements in The Running Grave  smack of anti-trans ideology 

In the cult, members are required to have sex with one another. As a result, a lesbian is forced against her will to sleep with men. Later in the book, a gay man refuses to go to bed with a woman. 

Robin, who has established herself in the cult by this point, sees nothing wrong with this, but another cult member scoffs at her for thinking “there’s such a thing as ‘gay’”.

The cult member then says “bodies don’t matter”, only the “spirit” matters, and it’s against the cult’s beliefs to think people aren’t “good enough to sleep with”. 

Anti-trans people have claimed to speak for women when they rile against the trans community, alleging that  lesbians are being “erased”  by transgender people.

This rhetoric takes many forms, with claims that  lesbians are being “coerced” into having sex with trans women  and that young queer people are “pressured” into transitioning . 

Both myths have been debunked, but the fact remains that such narratives still permeate conversations when transgender issues are brought up.

The book also takes clear aim at “social justice warriors” and left-wing people because the cult is concerned about homelessness, addiction, climate change and social deprivation. 

It believes that these are “ills generated by a capitalist, materialistic” society before deriding the “materialist trappings of property, weddings and the so-called nuclear family”.

A door-stopper of a novel, clocking in at more than 900 pages

Protagonist Strike is unpleasant but somehow a magnet to women. In several chapters, he bemoans the fact that he’s on a joyless weight-loss journey but also deals with a host of female characters who lust after him while he juggles his feelings for Robin. 

The book’s treatment of women is questionable at best. It genuinely feels as if JK Rowling has taken on the persona of a male author trying his hardest to write female characters. 

One woman is described as a power-hungry seductress who “took a used condom out of the bin” to try to get pregnant by the man she was having an affair with – I kid you not. 

In another chapter, Strike wonders if a different woman is gay – before asking himself if that’s “offensive” – because she goes to the gym, is nearly as “broad across the back as the man nearest her” and doesn’t return the interest of a flirtatious man. 

That isn’t even the first or only time that the “is this offensive?” thought process comes up during the enormous 900-plus pages it takes to tell this story.

Across the book several characters who are neurodivergent are described as being a “bit simple” or outright called the ‘r’ slur – although the use of this word is also debated among characters in the book

Robin questions if one of the higher-level members is biracial because he is tall, and the Chinese men she was “used to seeing in Chinatown” were “generally much shorter”. 

Oh, and then there is fatshaming. Unattractive women are nonchalantly described as chubby or fat, and Strike mentions weight loss before delving into his own perceived attractiveness and/or attraction to others.

There could be a decent narrative in  The Running Grave , but under JK Rowling’s leadership, the few glimpses of a basic but good story are covered up by a flawed veil of troublesome themes, unpleasant characters and page upon page of unneeded exposition.

• Dec 01 2023

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Forget the headlines: what J.K. Rowling's new book is actually about

By kerryn goldsworthy, save articles for later.

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CRIME FICTION Troubled Blood Robert Galbraith Sphere, $32.99

Whatever you may have heard to the contrary, thanks to one British newspaper , this fifth novel in the Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith, the crime-writing alias of J.K. Rowling, is not about a ''transvestite serial killer''.

Within the cast of hundreds, there is a relatively minor character called Creed whose modus operandi is sometimes, not always, to wear women’s clothes as a disguise in stalking victims. Creed appears in person once in the whole 927 pages, and is named and described only briefly and intermittently otherwise. Matters transgender are not mentioned at all.

Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger as Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott in the small-screen adaptation of Robert Galbraith's crime novels. Credit:

This fact is relevant to a review of the book in only two ways. The first is that any comment, much less judgment, that you make about a book is worthless unless you have read that book yourself. The second is that if we are to condemn J.K. Rowling for using such a common and time-honoured storytelling trope as cross-dressing for the purpose of harming women, then we must also wipe from the canon such classics as The Silence of the Lambs, Psycho , and the story of Little Red Riding Hood.

This fifth novel begins a year after the end of the fourth. Robin Ellacott has been promoted to business partner and fellow-detective, and is almost free of her awful husband. Strike is now both solvent and famous, but is still batting away the persistent approaches of his former lover of 16 years, a beautiful but bonkers British aristocrat to whom Strike’s oldest friend refers, with reason and with feeling, as Milady Berserko.

Both of these exes return in Troubled Blood to cause more headaches for the detectives, who are trying to concentrate on their investigation. Following a chance meeting with strangers in a Cornish pub, they have taken on their first cold case. A 29-year-old female GP called Margot Bamborough disappeared without a trace one rainy London night 40 years ago, and Strike and Robin are hired by Margot’s daughter Anna to investigate.

As must be the case for any financially solvent investigation agency, the business has several cases on the go at once, and the narrative is skilfully toggled from scene to scene as Strike and Robin, along with their three sub-contractors and the new office manager, juggle activities that include surveillance, workplace management and tensions, travel, interviews with witnesses and suspects, library and archive searches, and many hours of online slog.

All of this involves repeated sacrifices of private life, and at one point so many competing and dramatic demands are being made on the resilient and phlegmatic Strike – two of them literally matters of life and death, both involving people he has loved – that even he must surely crack under their weight.

Here as in the Harry Potter books, Galbraith/Rowling’s storytelling is exuberantly cinematic, and it shows not only in the vivid physical descriptions but also in the way that dialogue is used to develop character while simultaneously keeping the plot jogging along.

The kind of tension generated in previous Strike novels by the expectation of violent confrontation is absent here, but a different kind of tension is set up: Robin and Strike are working this cold case to a deadline. Anna and her wife Kim have done the financial arithmetic and have given the detectives a year to crack it.

It’s a deadline that they almost miss, and in the course of that year the story covers a startling number of topics, from fatherhood, cancer, birthdays, and perfume to astrology, sexual harassment, and the transactional element in personal relationships: the question of who gives and who receives gifts, of what those gifts are and why they’re given and what they mean. Are supermarket flowers almost worse than nothing? If you buy chocolate hedgehogs for your three nephews as Easter gifts, to which nephew do you give the hedgehog that accidentally got broken on the train down to Cornwall?

Asked by a friend whether I think the 927 pages are justified by the quality of the read, I replied – after the usual havering about personal taste – that in my view they absolutely are. But unless you are using an e-reader, do not try to read this book in bed. If you accidentally drop such a heavy and unwieldy object on your face, it will blacken both your eyes and break your nose.

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J.K. Rowling Has Read the Pilot Episode of New Harry Potter Series: 'Truly Thrilled' 

"I'm certain the TV show will more than live up to expectations," the author said in a tweet

Stuart C. Wilson/Getty, Alamy

A new era of Harry Potter is quickly approaching.

On June 26, HBO announced that it found the showrunner and executive producers for the new series , which will bring fans back to the beloved Wizarding World.

Two Succession alums have been tapped to helm the project — Francesca Gardiner, who will write and executive produce, and Mark Mylod, who will executive produce and direct several episodes — and they both got the official stamp of approval from J.K. Rowling .

In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Rowling — the author of the best-selling novels the series will be based on — revealed that she'd "interviewed" both Gardiner and Mylod and was "thrilled to announce [them] as our director and writer."

"Both have a genuine passion for # HarryPotter , and having read Francesca's pilot script and heard Mark's vision, I'm certain the TV show will more than live up to expectations," Rowling, 58, said.

The series was first announced in April 2023, and has since been confirmed to be a multi-season series based on Rowling's original seven books. Though the author has come under fire after making comments widely condemned as anti-transgender in 2020 , she is serving as an executive producer on the project.

Warner Bros/Everett

Per an official press release from Warner Bros. Discovery, the series will be "a faithful adaptation of the beloved Harry Potter book series" and will "feature a new cast to lead a new generation of fandom, full of the fantastic detail and much-loved characters Harry Potter fans have loved for over twenty-five years."

"Each season will bring Harry Potter and these incredible adventures to new audiences around the world, while the original, classic and cherished films will remain at the core of the franchise."

The show is currently in development.

Several members of the original cast have weighed in since the news broke of the new series, including Daniel Radcliffe .

The Merrily We Roll Along actor told E! News in May that "like the rest of the world, [he's] very excited to watch as an audience member. "

However, Radcliffe thinks that the team behind the series "very wisely want a clean break" from the original cast, adding, "I don't know if it would work to have us do anything in it."

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Matthew Lewis and Jason Isaacs have also weighed in – and shared what character they'd want to play in the series . Isaacs joked he'd play Dobby the house elf to avoid going to the makeup trailer – and so he could "steal the whole scene" – while Lewis was at a bit of a loss at the question.

"Gosh, I have no idea. It's very difficult as well because everyone just did such a wonderful job," he said. "I genuinely don't think there's anyone that I would want to even attempt to play."

Lewis, 34, admitted that he would not want to reprise his role as Neville Longbottom, though, as he's now "too old," but Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher Remus Lupin (played by David Thewlis ) would be a fun new challenge. "If I was to have a go, that would be one that I'd do."

Related Articles

JK Rowling Flexes VIP Role in ‘Harry Potter’ Reboot Amid Conflict With Franchise’s Former Stars

in Harry Potter

JK Rowling has provided an update on the upcoming  Harry Potter  reboot – plus her role in the process.

It’s only been just over a decade since the original eight Harry Potter films hit theaters, but the franchise is already in its reboot era. As Warner Bros. Discovery announced last year, the tales of the Boy Who Lived will soon be adapted into a seven-season TV show , one book per season, with the entire cast replaced by new actors .

Related: ‘Harry Potter’ Fans Banished From Diagon Alley, Told To Ask For Refund

The latter should come as no surprise, considering the fact that Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Emma Watson (Hermione Granger), and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) are now well into their thirties, and the first Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” takes place when their characters are 11 years old.

However, we can probably also rule out cameos from the OG stars , considering the current tension between them and the franchise’s creator , JK Rowling. Rowling – who’s made no secret of her critical views of the transgender community – recently denied the idea that she would easily forgive Radcliffe and Watson for speaking out against her opinions.

Related: Report – Wizarding World Prequel Getting Reboot as New ‘Harry Potter’ TV Series Looms

Just waiting for Dan and Emma to give you a very public apology … safe in the knowledge that you will forgive them … Not safe, I’m afraid. Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women’s hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces.

Not safe, I'm afraid. Celebs who cosied up to a movement intent on eroding women's hard-won rights and who used their platforms to cheer on the transitioning of minors can save their apologies for traumatised detransitioners and vulnerable women reliant on single sex spaces. — J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) April 10, 2024

Related: ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ Director Trashes “Crazy” Franchise Film

The backlash against Rowling’s stance on gender identity has been loud, with many fans (or former fans) vowing to boycott the new Harry Potter  TV series. However, that hasn’t stopped Warner Bros. Discovery from pushing ahead with the reboot, with the studio recently announcing plans to shift the show from its streaming platform, Max, to HBO .

It also recently unveiled the show’s creative team. Francesca Gardiner (HBO’s Succession  and  His Dark Materials  and  Killing Eve ) is Harry Potter ‘s showrunner and executive producer, while Mark Mylod (also behind Succession  as well as  Game of Thrones  and  The Last of Us ) will also serve as an executive producer, and direct several episodes .

Rowling (who also writes under the name Robert Galbraith) has since commented on the announcement , making it very clear that she’s still deeply involved in the show despite her recent controversies.

I’m truly thrilled to announce our director and writer, both of whom I interviewed as part of the production team. Both have a genuine passion for #HarryPotter, and having read Francesca’s pilot script and heard Mark’s vision, I’m certain the TV show will more than live up to expectations.

I'm truly thrilled to announce our director and writer, both of whom I interviewed as part of the production team. Both have a genuine passion for #HarryPotter , and having read Francesca's pilot script and heard Mark's vision, I'm certain the TV show will more than live up to… https://t.co/Cp146BXMny — J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 26, 2024

It’s no secret that Rowling is involved in the project. From the first announcement of the  Harry Potter reboot, we’ve known that she’ll serve as an executive producer .

During the production of the original Harry Potter films, Rowling also provided plenty of creative guidance, such as revealing certain plot points to relevant actors in advance (namely, telling Alan Rickman that Severus Snape was in love with Harry’s mother , Lily, and disclosing the fact that Dumbledore is gay ).

Recently, industry insider Jeffrey Sneider reported that Warner Bros. Discovery has been looking for a way to buy Rowling out of the franchise .

Related: JK Rowling Threatens Legal War Against Former ‘Harry Potter’ Fans

Commenting on the announcement that Amazon is also producing an audiobook reboot for Audible , he wrote: “Reading between the lines of this announcement, this feels like Rowling squeezing as much juice as she can from the Harry Potter orange before WBD inevitably buys her out to get rid of her, as the original stars won’t return while she’s still around.”

Last year,  rumors emerged that Warner Bros. Discovery wanted to bring the original Harry Potter series cast back for a ninth movie (potentially a big screen adaptation of the stage show “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”) but to no avail due to their sentiments toward Rowling.

Are you excited for the Harry Potter reboot? Let us know why (or why not) in the comments.

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Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith - book review: JK Rowling is the new queen of crime

Jk rowling’s latest novel brings a  refreshing change to the genre, article bookmarked.

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‘Be careful what you say – she’s here!’ These were the words whispered in my ear at the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Awards last week. I had confided to the organisers that I had a Robert Galbraith joke when it came to reading the shortlist.

But surely the pseudonymous Galbraith (J K Rowling) didn’t turn up for events like this? Indeed she was there, looking both elegant and slightly vulnerable, and adding a certain lustre to proceedings even if room was already full of celebrated crime writers.

In the event, I didn’t use the joke, but something remarkable happened that evening. The writer of two books featuring not a boy wizard but one-legged detective Cormoran Strike won over the crime writing community. It quickly became evident that Rowling had a genuine and unassuming desire to be a member of this new fraternity that she had recently joined. But – leaving aside Rowling’s personal virtues – just how good are the Cormoran Strike books?

Written under the sobriquet, The Cuckoo’s Calling did not initially create much interest in 2013, but when the identity of “Robert Galbraith” was revealed (against Rowling’s wishes, we were told – perhaps because her first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy in 2012, had a mixed critical response, despite formidable sales).

This first crime novel, however, was soon recognised as a winner, with military policeman-turned-sleuth Strike finding the truth behind the apparent suicide of a supermodel. That book sported a vibrant use of the apparatus of the crime novel, despite the familiar trappings (bloody-minded detective traversing various class divisions, showing up a wrong-headed police force). The second Strike outing, The Silkworm, was diverting, but less inventive – and, for that matter, less plausible.

Now we have Strike number three, and, thankfully, it’s every bit as impressive as that first book. After a chilling opening in the company of a psychopathic killer, we move to the building site that is Tottenham Court Road and the office of Strike.

Working for him, Robin Ellacott is used to surprises. But nothing as gruesome as a package that she opens containing a woman’s severed leg. Her boss quickly compiles a list of those who might be responsible – four individuals (all differently characterised) from his past, all of whom are capable of unspeakable and horrendous acts – and who all hate Strike’s guts.

The police have one individual in the frame, but Strike is not persuaded, and enters the grim worlds of the other suspects.

But the clock is ticking, and more atrocities pile up, with Strike and Ellacott firmly in the firing line.

Written in an unadorned, non-literary prose, Career of Evil confirms that Rowling’s post-Potter initiative is proving to be a very welcome one. Both Strike and Ellacott are multi-dimensional characters (she is stuck in a dying relationship), and there is no gainsaying the sheer relish with which the writer tackles the genre.

There are many unusual elements, such as Strike’s cross-country odyssey, the active sexual history of his rock groupie mother (and rock music is significant: the title of the book is from a Patti Smith lyric), and even erotic fantasies involving amputees such as Strike. The new writing identity that Rowling has forged for herself is not only utterly unlike that of her fantasy endeavours, but quirkily different from most of the already established confrères she is befriending in the crime writing world. Let’s hope the sardonic Cormoran Strike is here to stay.

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I spent a year living in Paris, while I was studying for my degree in French and Classics at Exeter University.   

I was on a train from Manchester to London when I came up with the idea for Harry Potter. The train was delayed, and as I sat there, all the details of a black-haired, bespectacled boy-wizard just bubbled up in my brain…

My two West Highland terriers are  called Bronte  and  Emma.  

When I was a child, I read absolutely anything.  These books are the ones I particularly love d then  and read time and time again.  

When I’m writing, my absolute favourite thing to drink is tea.  My husband sometimes brings me a cup, without me even asking.   

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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two: The Official Playscript of the Original West End Production Paperback – July 25, 2017

• Print length 336 pages
• Language English
• Grade level 5 - 6
• Lexile measure 500L
• Dimensions 5.5 x 1.25 x 7.75 inches
• Publisher Arthur A. Levine Books
• Publication date July 25, 2017
• ISBN-10 133821666X
• ISBN-13 978-1338216660
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

About the author.

J.K. Rowling is the author of the enduringly popular Harry Potter books. After the idea for Harry Potter came to her on a delayed train journey in 1990, she plotted out and started writing the series of seven books and the first was published as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the UK in 1997. The series took another ten years to complete, concluding in 2007 with the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows .

To accompany the series, J.K. Rowling wrote three short companion volumes for charity, Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them , in aid of Comic Relief and Lumos, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard , in aid of Lumos. She also collaborated on the writing of a stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child , which was published as a script book.

Her other books for children include the fairy tale The Ickabog and The Christmas Pig , which were published in 2020 and 2021 respectively and have also been bestsellers. She is also the author of books for adults, including a bestselling crime fiction series.

J.K. Rowling has received many awards and honors for her writing. She also supports a number of causes through her charitable trust Volant and is the founder of the children’s charity Lumos.

To find out more about J.K. Rowling visit jkrowlingstories.com.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Arthur A. Levine Books (July 25, 2017)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 133821666X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1338216660
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 9+ years, from customers
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 500L
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ 5 - 6
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.25 x 7.75 inches
• #70 in Children's Friendship Books
• #105 in Children's Fantasy & Magic Books
• #118 in Children's Action & Adventure Books (Books)

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About the authors

J.k. rowling.

J.K. Rowling is the author of the enduringly popular, era-defining Harry Potter book series, as well as several stand-alone novels for adults and children, and a bestselling crime fiction series written under the pen name Robert Galbraith.

The Harry Potter books have now sold over 600 million copies worldwide, been translated into 85 languages and made into eight blockbuster films. They continue to be discovered and loved by new generations of readers.

Alongside the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling also wrote three short companion volumes for charity: Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, in aid of Comic Relief, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard, in aid of her international children’s charity, Lumos. The companion books and original series are all available as audiobooks.

In 2016, J.K. Rowling collaborated with playwright Jack Thorne and director John Tiffany to continue Harry’s story in a stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which opened in London, and is now thrilling audiences on four continents. The script book was published to mark the plays opening in 2016 and instantly topped the bestseller lists.

In the same year, she made her debut as a screenwriter with the film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Inspired by the original companion volume, it was the first in a series of new adventures featuring wizarding world magizoologist Newt Scamander. The second, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, was released in 2018 and the third, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore was released in 2022.

The screenplays were published to coincide with each film’s release: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - The Original Screenplay (2016), Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald - The Original Screenplay (2018) and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore - The Complete Screenplay (2022).

Fans of Fantastic Beasts and Harry Potter can find out more at www.wizardingworld.com.

J.K. Rowling’s fairy tale for younger children, The Ickabog, was serialised for free online for children during the Covid-19 pandemic in the summer of 2020 and is now published as a book illustrated by children, with her royalties going to her charitable trust, Volant, to benefit charities helping alleviate social deprivation and assist vulnerable groups, particularly women and children.

Her latest children’s novel The Christmas Pig, published in 2021, is a standalone adventure story about a boy’s love for his most treasured thing and how far he will go to find it.

J.K. Rowling also writes novels for adults. The Casual Vacancy was published in 2012 and adapted for television in 2015. Under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, she is the author of the highly acclaimed ‘Strike’ crime series, featuring private detective Cormoran Strike and his partner Robin Ellacott. The first of these, The Cuckoo’s Calling, was published to critical acclaim in 2013, at first without its author’s true identity being known. The Silkworm followed in 2014, Career of Evil in 2015, Lethal White in 2018, Troubled Blood in 2020 and The Ink Black Heart in 2022. The series has also been adapted for television by the BBC and HBO.

J.K. Rowling’s 2008 Harvard Commencement speech was published in 2015 as an illustrated book, Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination, sold in aid of Lumos and university-wide financial aid at Harvard.

As well as receiving an OBE and Companion of Honour for services to children’s literature, J.K. Rowling has received many other awards and honours, including France’s Legion d’Honneur, Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award and Denmark’s Hans Christian Andersen Award.

J.K. Rowling supports a number of causes through her charitable trust, Volant. She is also the founder and president of Lumos, an international children’s charity fighting for every child’s right to a family by transforming care systems around the world.

www.jkrowling.com

Image: Photography Debra Hurford Brown © J.K. Rowling

John Tiffany

John Tiffany directed "Once" for which he was the recipient of multiple awards both in the West End and on Broadway. As Associate Director of the Royal Court, his work includes "The Twits," "Hope" and "The Pass." He was the director of "Let The Right One In" for the National Theatre of Scotland, which transferred to the Royal Court, West End and St. Ann s Warehouse. His other work for the National Theatre of Scotland includes "Macbeth" (also Broadway), "Enquirer," "The Missing," "Peter Pan," "The House of Bernarda Alba," "Transform Caithness: Hunter, Be Near Me," "Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us," The "Bacchae," "Black Watch," for which he won the Olivier and Critics Circle Best Director Awards, "Elizabeth Gordon Quinn" and "Home: Glasgow." Other recent credits include "The Glass Menagerie" at A.R.T. and on Broadway and "The Ambassador" at BAM. Tiffany was Associate Director of the National Theatre of Scotland from 2005 to 2012, and was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University in the 2010-2011 academic year.

Photo credit: Tony Rinaldo

Jack Thorne

Jack Thorne writes for theatre, film, television and radio. His theatre credits include "Hope" and "Let The Right One In," both directed by John Tiffany, "The Solid Life of Sugarwater" for the Graeae Theatre Company, "Bunny" for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, "Stacy" for the Trafalgar Studios, " 2nd May 1997" and "When You Cure Me" for the Bush. His adaptations include "The Physicists" for the Donmar Warehouse and "Stuart: A Life Backwards" for Hightide. On film his credits include "War Book," "A Long Way Down" and "The Scouting Book for Boys." For television his credits include "The Last Panthers," "Don t Take My Baby," " This Is England," "The Fades," "Glue" and "Cast-Offs" and the upcoming "National Treasure." In 2012 he won BAFTAs for best series ("The Fades") and best serial ("This Is England 88").

Photo by Martin Godwin Guardian

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