ROWLING TAKES ON GROWN-UP READERS
Author has new book but admits she struggled with success
J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults is poised to become the publishing sensation of the year, with orders of The Casual Vacancy running into the millions. But while the Harry Potter phenomenon transformed her from an impoverished single mother into one of the world’s richest authors, she has admitted to struggling with her success, turning to therapy throughout her career to help cope with the pressures of fame and fortune.
Rowling’s earlier life was not easy; she had a difficult relationship with her father and, at 25, lost her mother to complications relating to multiple sclerosis. Rowling moved to Portugal shortly afterwards, where she married a local journalist and had a daughter, but the marriage collapsed and, after six months, she returned to Britain and Edinburgh, where she survived on benefits, feeling suicidal, and was diagnosed with clinical depression.
Harry Potter changed all that, but on the eve of her new novel’s publication, Rowling said that she had found her sudden success “incredibly disorienting”.
The author, who has sold more than 450 million books since publishing her first Harry Potter book 15 years ago, said that she underwent therapy while feeling at “rock bottom” when writing her first book in Edinburgh, where she was living in a bedsit with her young daughter.
“And I had to do it again when my life was changing so suddenly — and it really helped,” she said. “I’m a big fan of it, it helped me a lot.
“For a few years I did feel I was on a psychic treadmill, trying to keep up with where I was. Everything changed so rapidly, so strangely. I knew no one who’d ever been in the public eye. I didn’t know anyone — anyone — to whom I could turn and say, ‘what do you do?’, so it was incredibly disorienting.”
The author, who married her second husband, Neil Murray, a doctor, in 2001, said that she had resorted to wearing a disguise while shopping for a wedding dress to escape the attentions of fans.
Rowling, whose fortune is estimated at $890 million and who has given away more than $160 million to charity, said that she had also struggled with the huge number of demands to help others financially.
“You don’t expect the pressure of it, in the sense of being bombarded by requests,” she said. “I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems. I was hit by this tsunami of demands. I felt overwhelmed.”
The Casual Vacancy will become an instant bestseller when it is published on Thursday. Online orders have already exceeded one million and Waterstones, the bookstore chain, said that the book had prompted the largest number of order sales for any title this year. It will be opening its stores an hour earlier on Thursday morning.
The story opens with the death of Barry, a parish councillor in Pagford, a fictional West Country village that neighbours the Fields, a deprived council estate.
Snobbish residents hope to fill the seat with a new councillor who will vote to reassign responsibility for the Fields to a neighbouring council. But the campaign begins to unravel as anonymous messages begin appearing on the parish council website, exposing villagers’ secrets.
The Casual Vacancy sees her turning to adult themes. One of the central characters is a prostitute and drug addict struggling to keep her three-year-old son out of social care.
Rowling, 47, said the novel poked fun at Britain’s middle classes. “We’re a phenomenally snobby society and it’s such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny, it’s the class I know best, and it’s the class where you find the most pretension.”
She also admitted that she had considered publishing the novel under a pseudonym.
“But in some ways I think it’s braver to do it like this. The worst that can happen is that everyone says, ‘Well, that was dreadful, she should have stuck to writing for kids’ and I can take that. If everyone says, ‘Well, that’s shockingly bad — back to wizards with you,’ then obviously I won’t be throwing a party. But I will live.”