Book Review: The Silkworm
I've gotten my grubby little fingers on J. K. Rowling’s The Silkworm, the second book in her Cormoran Strike mystery series. I liked it, although the murder was rather gruesome - it isn’t described at great length, but it’s disturbing.
Or rather, the murder method itself isn’t bad, but the way that the murderer treats the body after the murder is appalling.
Although honestly, the way she desecrates Quine’s body is not nearly as disturbing as the way that she’s found to soil his name. Quine is a difficult man with few friends in the first place, and by passing off a pastiche as his last novel - a pastiche which is filled with vicious caricatures of everyone he knows - she manages to make sure that all of those friends will loathe him posthumously.
It’s particularly disturbing, because Quine’s supposed last book is so vile that I was really kind of on board with his murder until we learned that he didn’t actually write all those awful things about the few people who still loved him despite all his flaws. My feeling was, of course the desecration of his corpse was awful, but...good riddance to bad rubbish.
She didn’t just murder his body, but his reputation. That is an effective revenge.
***
I've always felt that the later Harry Potter books were far less effective than the earlier ones. It's fairly commonplace to blame this on J. K. Rowling's attempt to go dark, man, dark,...but The Silkworm makes it clear (even clearer than The Cuckoo's Calling, that is) that darkness is actually quite within Rowling's skill set. Both take place in a world full of venal people, many of whom are using that venality as a mask for the fact that they're actually pretty despicable.
And, in fact, the wizarding world is also full of venal people, many of whom are secretly despicable, who live in a fairly awful symptom. Their prison system is run by avatars of pure despair who are capable of sucking the souls out of their victims! How much more grimdark can you get? It's just that Rowling presented it light-heartedly, and I think for many readers the aesthetic presentation - is this terrifying or is it hilarious? - is more important than what's actually there.
So clearly the problem with the later Harry Potter books is not that Rowling is incapable of writing compelling darkness. Darkness in Rowling often resides in the pettiness of people, their little jealousies and cowardices that lead to horrible actions. In the later Harry Potter books, she's trying to achieve a kind of grandiose darkness, and that particular kind of darkness is simply not her forte.
Or rather, the murder method itself isn’t bad, but the way that the murderer treats the body after the murder is appalling.
Although honestly, the way she desecrates Quine’s body is not nearly as disturbing as the way that she’s found to soil his name. Quine is a difficult man with few friends in the first place, and by passing off a pastiche as his last novel - a pastiche which is filled with vicious caricatures of everyone he knows - she manages to make sure that all of those friends will loathe him posthumously.
It’s particularly disturbing, because Quine’s supposed last book is so vile that I was really kind of on board with his murder until we learned that he didn’t actually write all those awful things about the few people who still loved him despite all his flaws. My feeling was, of course the desecration of his corpse was awful, but...good riddance to bad rubbish.
She didn’t just murder his body, but his reputation. That is an effective revenge.
***
I've always felt that the later Harry Potter books were far less effective than the earlier ones. It's fairly commonplace to blame this on J. K. Rowling's attempt to go dark, man, dark,...but The Silkworm makes it clear (even clearer than The Cuckoo's Calling, that is) that darkness is actually quite within Rowling's skill set. Both take place in a world full of venal people, many of whom are using that venality as a mask for the fact that they're actually pretty despicable.
And, in fact, the wizarding world is also full of venal people, many of whom are secretly despicable, who live in a fairly awful symptom. Their prison system is run by avatars of pure despair who are capable of sucking the souls out of their victims! How much more grimdark can you get? It's just that Rowling presented it light-heartedly, and I think for many readers the aesthetic presentation - is this terrifying or is it hilarious? - is more important than what's actually there.
So clearly the problem with the later Harry Potter books is not that Rowling is incapable of writing compelling darkness. Darkness in Rowling often resides in the pettiness of people, their little jealousies and cowardices that lead to horrible actions. In the later Harry Potter books, she's trying to achieve a kind of grandiose darkness, and that particular kind of darkness is simply not her forte.