Rowling Reconsidered: Part 2
This is the second part of my attempt to cast light on the writing of J.K. Rowling in the Harry Potter series using the new information of her subsequent works. Part 1 is here.
I promised to reconsider the following:
Are her books unfeminist, fat-phobic, full of plot-holes and bad messages, "Calvinistic" in morality, unsatisfying in romance, and supportive of slavery?
I've done feminism already. The next topic that was the subject of much spirited discussion ten years ago is Rowling's attitude toward people of weight.
Harry Often Said That Dudley Looked Like a Pig in a Wig
The charge of weight-prejudice came up after J.K. Rowling posted a rant on her website around April 2006. Since I can no longer find it there I'll post the whole thing here for posterity:
For Girls Only, Probably...
Being thin. Probably not a subject that you ever expected to read about on this website, but my recent trip to London got me thinking...
It started in the car on the way to Leavesden film studios. I whiled away part of the journey reading a magazine that featured several glossy photographs of a very young woman who is either seriously ill or suffering from an eating disorder (which is, of course, the same thing); anyway, there is no other explanation for the shape of her body. She can talk about eating absolutely loads, being terribly busy and having the world's fastest metabolism until her tongue drops off (hooray! Another couple of ounces gone!), but her concave stomach, protruding ribs and stick-like arms tell a different story. This girl needs help, but, the world being what it is, they're sticking her on magazine covers instead. All this passed through my mind as I read the interview, then I threw the horrible thing aside.
But blow me down if the subject of girls and thinness didn't crop up shortly after I got out of the car. I was talking to one of the actors and, somehow or other, we got onto the subject of a girl he knows (not any of the Potter actresses - somebody from his life beyond the films) who had been dubbed 'fat' by certain charming classmates. (Could they possibly be jealous that she knows the boy in question? Surely not!)
'But,' said the actor, in honest perplexity, 'she is really not fat.'
'"Fat" is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her,' I said; I could remember it happening when I was at school, and witnessing it among the teenagers I used to teach. Nevertheless, I could see that to him, a well-adjusted male, it was utterly bizarre behaviour, like yelling 'thicko!' at Stephen Hawking.
His bemusement at this everyday feature of female existence reminded me how strange and sick the 'fat' insult is. I mean, is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? I'm not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain...
I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? 'You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!'
'Well,' I said, slightly nonplussed, 'the last time you saw me I'd just had a baby.'
What I felt like saying was, 'I've produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren't either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?' But no - my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!
So the issue of size and women was (ha, ha) weighing on my mind as I flew home to Edinburgh the next day. Once up in the air, I opened a newspaper and my eyes fell, immediately, on an article about the pop star Pink.
Her latest single, 'Stupid Girls', is the antidote-anthem for everything I had been thinking about women and thinness. 'Stupid Girls' satirises the talking toothpicks held up to girls as role models: those celebrities whose greatest achievement is un-chipped nail polish, whose only aspiration seems to be getting photographed in a different outfit nine times a day, whose only function in the world appears to be supporting the trade in overpriced handbags and rat-sized dogs.
Maybe all this seems funny, or trivial, but it's really not. It's about what girls want to be, what they're told they should be, and how they feel about who they are. I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny - a thousand things, before 'thin'. And frankly, I'd rather they didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls. Rant over.
This stirred up a storm of critical reaction accusing Rowling of hypocrisy because of the treatment of fat characters in her books, which she addressed on the "Rubbish Bin" section on her website:
Q: JKR has no right to talk about the glorification of unhealthily underweight women in some sections of the media, because there's a fat boy in her books.
A: There have been several variants of this story, all of which were written by people who had either never read past chapter two of 'Philosopher's Stone', or chose simply to ignore what the rest of us fondly term 'facts'. I thought of listing all the many characters in the Harry Potter books who are on the plumper side, to demonstrate what a very diverse group of personalities they are, how they include several of my most important, admirable and lovable characters, and how 'overweight' in no way equates to 'bad' in my fictional world... but Andy from Mugglenet has done it for me. See http://www.mugglenet.com/infosection/opinion/fatfem.shtml. Andy, I really owe you, because I've used the time you saved me to type up half a chapter instead!
I posted about it at the time here.
There is no doubt that Harry "uses" prejudiced thinking about fatness to insult his bullying cousin Dudley Dursley, both to his face and in the privacy of his own thoughts. To a lesser extent, his dislike hatred and fear of Professor Umbridge is expressed with his dislike of her "squat" "stubby" look (caused by being short and stout, though it's not clear to me if she's actually overweight or just has a stout body type). Of course Harry doesn't think or say such negative thoughts about characters he loves, like Hagrid or Mrs. Weasley, no matter how "wide" or "plump" they may be. Draco Malfoy, on the other hand, definitely does. It would probably be unrealistic if they didn't.
We live in a world where people come in all shapes and sizes and degrees and types of attractiveness, a world, in fact, where it seems more of us are overweight than ever before. And it is a world where people and writers have for centuries used these things for humor, often cruel humor. And one where writers have long used attractiveness as a proxy for moral worth and ugliness as an indicator of evil. It is a tricky path for writers to tread.
So what path has J.K. Rowling followed since the Harry Potter series? Well, her next book certainly gives ammunition to accuse her of fat-bashing, in the character of Howard Mollison. He is in some sense the "villain" of the book, being the leader of the don't-help-poor-people faction, though in his actions he is by far not the worst person in the book. He is "jovial, extravagantly gallant and courteous" in the security of his position as unchallenged ruler of his little town. And he is very fat:
He was an extravagantly obese man of sixty-four. A great apron of stomach fell so far down in front of his thighs that most people thought instantly of his penis when they first clapped eyes on him, wondering when he had last seen it, how he washed it, how he managed to perform any of the acts for which a penis is designed.
Unlike Dudley or Vernon Dursley, Mr. Mollison doesn't face insults or ridicule for his weight from other characters or the narration. He is more like Professor Slughorn, complacent and content with his life and his appearance:
Howard thought about what Dr. Jawanda had said about his weight: that it was the source of all his health problems.
Nonsense, obviously. Look at the Hubbards' boy: built like a beanpole, and shocking asthma. Howard had always been big, as far back as he could remember. In the very few photographs taken of him with his father, who had left the family when Howard was four or five, he was merely chubby. After his father had left, his mother had sat him at the head of the table, between herself and his grandmother, and been hurt if he did not take seconds. Steadily he had grown to fill the space between the two women, as heavy at twelve as the father who had left them. Howard had come to associate a hearty appetite with manliness. His bulk was one of his defining characteristics. It had been built with pleasure, by the women who loved him, and he thought it was absolutely characteristic of Bends-Your-Ear, that emasculating killjoy, that she wanted to strip him of it.
Or, I should say, he doesn't face insults or ridicule except for one dramatic public scene where his addiction to food is compared to drug addiction.
However, as in the first description of Howard, the narrative voice is pitiless, scatalogical, and sexual and throughout the book we see many references to his largeness as he literally throws his weight around in crowds and to the health consequences of his obesity, including shortness of breath, a rash, and a serious heart attack. Certainly, it can be experienced as fat-bashing, though every character (or perhaps I should say nearly every character) is described in a similarly unpleasant way. Nearly every character in the book has a self-destructive obsession or addiction, and most are described with unappealing physical details. Some, such as Terri Weedon and Maureen Lowe, are unpleasantly (very unpleasantly) thin.
Two other characters are described as overweight: Tessa Wall, one of the nicer characters, who is "short and dumpy" and has just been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, and Miles Mollison, Howard's son, who reads as one of the bad guys though we never see him do anything particularly bad. Miles is "paunchy" and seems to have a bit of middle-age spread (possibly exaggerated by his unhappy wife's point of view). Oh, and Howard's wife, Miles's mother, Shirley Mollison is "plump" and "pretty" and "trim" and a truly terrible human being.
I don't really know what to say about all this. Certainly some people have read it as fat-bashing. To me, it feels more like Howard's obesity is just one of many ways the people in the book have of being screwed up by others and themselves, and causing harm to themselves and others. On the other hand, I can read Howard's massiveness and Shirley's trim plumpness and Miles's creeping spread as a metaphor for the heavy uncaring inertia of society that makes it so hard to change things for the better and help those who are hurting.
Moving on to the Cormoran Strike books, I don't have the impression that weight or other appearance issues has nearly as much importance in them. The hero himself is somewhat overweight--25 or 30 pounds. He is referred to as "fat" by some people who don't like him, but it seems to concern him only because it aggravates the difficulties he has with his amputated leg. He is not particularly attractive in appearance but that doesn't seem to worry him much, though he is sensitive about his disability.
Robin, on the other hand, is conventionally attractive. Her weight is mentioned in the third book when she is dieting before her wedding:
"Why are you only having a salad? Aren't you hungry?" asked Strike, clearing his plate of chips. As Robin had suspected, his mood had improved with the ingestion of carbohydrates.
"Wedding," said Robin shortly.
Strike said nothing. Comments on her figure fell strictly outside the self-imposed boundaries he had established for their relationship, which he had determined from the outset must never become too intimate. Nevertheless, he thought she was becoming too thin. In his opinion (and even the thought fell outside those same boundaries), she looked better curvier.
This could be seen as a fairly heavy-handed and awkward "message" to girls and young women not to worry about being super-thin (because the guys don't like it anyway, which is what matters, amirite?). I'd rather see it as an opportunity to slip a bit of shipping in, as Strike sternly tells himself not to think about things like that.
I don't know anything about weight issues in the "Cursed Child" play (and possibly Rowling won't have much input into the casting) but one of the four main characters of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" is a plump man, which I suspect is due to how he was written in the script. It will be interesting to see how his character develops, but to be quite honest I've already written far more about this issue than my amount of interest in it warrants and I'll move on to the next topic, which is ... PLOT HOLES.
The Target of Perfection at Which We Shoot in Vain
Known Rowling-worshipper though I am, even I can admit that there are sometimes problems with the plotting, consistency, and logic of the Harry Potter series. As I put it in my unfinished review of Deathly Hallows:
while I can perfectly understand an aesthetic preference for authors with tighter logic, more consistency, and more rigorous editing, this is J.K. Rowling we're talking about. She is as she has always been - brilliant, sloppy, and secretive, her inventive genius outstripping her dutiful attempts to keep all her details straight.
Of course there are strong reasons--one might even say excuses--for why we occasionally found what we called plot holes in the Harry Potter story:
• Magic. Magical plots are inherently tricky, especially when they include factors such as time travel, mind-reading, conjuring things out of thin air, and instant transportation (Apparation). "Why didn't they just ....?" questions are bound to be numerous. All sorts of unknowns and complications must be invented and explained.
• Scope. The size and complexity of the work is simply enormous: seven books, some of them very long, essentially all telling the story of what happened Halloween night 1981. Everything either leads up to that momentous event or follows from it, and it is revealed with agonizing slowness over the seven novels. I'll just say ... it was a difficult task she set herself.
• Success. After the first couple of books, the incredible sales figures put a lot of pressure on Rowling. She was under extreme time pressure, both from the clamoring of the fans and the needs of the publishers, booksellers, etc. for whom the Harry Potter books were literally their livelihood. She strove to meet her deadlines and when she turned in the books, her publishers did their level best to get them to market as fast as possible. And because of the insatiable demand for spoilers and hints, they had to preserve an almost unprecedented level of secrecy, making it impossible to have many eyes checking the manuscripts. She did not even share them with her husband, her children, or her sister. Then, when the books were published, millions of readers scoured them for errors and discussed them ad nauseum online.
Her subsequent books, though, have none of these three factors. So how do they do in terms of logical consistency and freedom from errors? I'd say they do quite well.
The Casual Vacancy does not have the kind of plot that lends itself to "holes" and I must say I don't see any problems with it. The three Cormoran Strike books, however, are procedural mysteries, a complex and demanding genre with many opportunities to mess up the plot. The crime must make sense, in the first place, then the investigators' investigations must be reasonable and motivated, following a comprehensible trail of clues, and at the same time information must be carefully dribbled out to the readers in a way that makes it possible but unlikely that they will figure out the crime before the main character in the book does. This is complicated enough that I probably should have included "Mystery" as another factor that makes the Harry Potter series vulnerable to plot holes but come to think of it, that's pretty much covered under "Scope." And, honestly, though it is often pointed out that the Potter books are mysteries, they do not necessarily have to be "fair" mysteries since they are not in that genre and don't have to follow its rules.
I will say that I think the Cormoran Strike mysteries are NOT full of plot holes but are on the contrary quite tight and well done, as mystery novels go. This is not to say I don't have little carps and criticisms here and there but I have rarely read a mystery novel (and I have read MANY mystery novels) where that is not true. In the interest of completeness (and because I feel like it), I will list my little carps and criticisms here:
• The Cuckoo's Calling. This is not something I noticed myself but my daughter says that the chronology is messed up: "At one point there were three Thursdays in the same week. At one point a Wednesday came after a Monday, and at another point a Thursday came after a Monday." I haven't checked to see if I agree with this criticism. The only thing that bothered me when I read the book was I doubted if Strike would really have been able to figure out everything he did about the makeup artist who was nosy and dyslexic from the information presented. I certainly wouldn't have. [ETA: Oh, and the thing with the water droplets!]
• Silkworm. This is the novel I had the most problems with. The motive for the crime was perfectly clear and reasonable. However, I did not understand the motive for doing the crime in the weird and elaborate way it was done. I also did not understand Strike's motives for doing what he did to catch the crook in the end, especially the part with the cab. If anyone understood it, I would love an explanation! [ETA: My daughter has successfully convinced me that the way the crime was done is perfectly logical and in character for the murderer. I still don't understand the cab, though.]
• Career of Evil. I thought this book was exceptionally well-constructed, especially the difficult task of having the murderer's narrative throughout without giving away the murderer's identity. I just had two little problems. One is that I thought it unfair that one particular person's height was not specifically described. Can't say anything more without spoiling the book. Another, which might just be my denseness, is that I didn't understand something about facial hair. Again, can't discuss without spoiling.
Obviously I don't know yet if The Cursed Child and/or Fantastic Beasts will be subject to criticisms along these lines. They will be vulnerable in that they will concern magic, which is always tricky. I don't think they will be vulnerable in terms of scope, or success/time pressure factors. I don't know if either of them will attempt a mystery format. But I hope so!
Well, this is already pretty long and the next two topics, Morality/Messages and Romance, are way more fascinating to me than Weight Prejudice and Plot Holes. So I will stop here and attempt to be more entertaining in Part 3.
I promised to reconsider the following:
Are her books unfeminist, fat-phobic, full of plot-holes and bad messages, "Calvinistic" in morality, unsatisfying in romance, and supportive of slavery?
I've done feminism already. The next topic that was the subject of much spirited discussion ten years ago is Rowling's attitude toward people of weight.
Harry Often Said That Dudley Looked Like a Pig in a Wig
The charge of weight-prejudice came up after J.K. Rowling posted a rant on her website around April 2006. Since I can no longer find it there I'll post the whole thing here for posterity:
For Girls Only, Probably...
Being thin. Probably not a subject that you ever expected to read about on this website, but my recent trip to London got me thinking...
It started in the car on the way to Leavesden film studios. I whiled away part of the journey reading a magazine that featured several glossy photographs of a very young woman who is either seriously ill or suffering from an eating disorder (which is, of course, the same thing); anyway, there is no other explanation for the shape of her body. She can talk about eating absolutely loads, being terribly busy and having the world's fastest metabolism until her tongue drops off (hooray! Another couple of ounces gone!), but her concave stomach, protruding ribs and stick-like arms tell a different story. This girl needs help, but, the world being what it is, they're sticking her on magazine covers instead. All this passed through my mind as I read the interview, then I threw the horrible thing aside.
But blow me down if the subject of girls and thinness didn't crop up shortly after I got out of the car. I was talking to one of the actors and, somehow or other, we got onto the subject of a girl he knows (not any of the Potter actresses - somebody from his life beyond the films) who had been dubbed 'fat' by certain charming classmates. (Could they possibly be jealous that she knows the boy in question? Surely not!)
'But,' said the actor, in honest perplexity, 'she is really not fat.'
'"Fat" is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her,' I said; I could remember it happening when I was at school, and witnessing it among the teenagers I used to teach. Nevertheless, I could see that to him, a well-adjusted male, it was utterly bizarre behaviour, like yelling 'thicko!' at Stephen Hawking.
His bemusement at this everyday feature of female existence reminded me how strange and sick the 'fat' insult is. I mean, is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? I'm not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain...
I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? 'You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!'
'Well,' I said, slightly nonplussed, 'the last time you saw me I'd just had a baby.'
What I felt like saying was, 'I've produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren't either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?' But no - my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!
So the issue of size and women was (ha, ha) weighing on my mind as I flew home to Edinburgh the next day. Once up in the air, I opened a newspaper and my eyes fell, immediately, on an article about the pop star Pink.
Her latest single, 'Stupid Girls', is the antidote-anthem for everything I had been thinking about women and thinness. 'Stupid Girls' satirises the talking toothpicks held up to girls as role models: those celebrities whose greatest achievement is un-chipped nail polish, whose only aspiration seems to be getting photographed in a different outfit nine times a day, whose only function in the world appears to be supporting the trade in overpriced handbags and rat-sized dogs.
Maybe all this seems funny, or trivial, but it's really not. It's about what girls want to be, what they're told they should be, and how they feel about who they are. I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny - a thousand things, before 'thin'. And frankly, I'd rather they didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls. Rant over.
This stirred up a storm of critical reaction accusing Rowling of hypocrisy because of the treatment of fat characters in her books, which she addressed on the "Rubbish Bin" section on her website:
Q: JKR has no right to talk about the glorification of unhealthily underweight women in some sections of the media, because there's a fat boy in her books.
A: There have been several variants of this story, all of which were written by people who had either never read past chapter two of 'Philosopher's Stone', or chose simply to ignore what the rest of us fondly term 'facts'. I thought of listing all the many characters in the Harry Potter books who are on the plumper side, to demonstrate what a very diverse group of personalities they are, how they include several of my most important, admirable and lovable characters, and how 'overweight' in no way equates to 'bad' in my fictional world... but Andy from Mugglenet has done it for me. See http://www.mugglenet.com/infosection/opinion/fatfem.shtml. Andy, I really owe you, because I've used the time you saved me to type up half a chapter instead!
I posted about it at the time here.
There is no doubt that Harry "uses" prejudiced thinking about fatness to insult his bullying cousin Dudley Dursley, both to his face and in the privacy of his own thoughts. To a lesser extent, his dislike hatred and fear of Professor Umbridge is expressed with his dislike of her "squat" "stubby" look (caused by being short and stout, though it's not clear to me if she's actually overweight or just has a stout body type). Of course Harry doesn't think or say such negative thoughts about characters he loves, like Hagrid or Mrs. Weasley, no matter how "wide" or "plump" they may be. Draco Malfoy, on the other hand, definitely does. It would probably be unrealistic if they didn't.
We live in a world where people come in all shapes and sizes and degrees and types of attractiveness, a world, in fact, where it seems more of us are overweight than ever before. And it is a world where people and writers have for centuries used these things for humor, often cruel humor. And one where writers have long used attractiveness as a proxy for moral worth and ugliness as an indicator of evil. It is a tricky path for writers to tread.
So what path has J.K. Rowling followed since the Harry Potter series? Well, her next book certainly gives ammunition to accuse her of fat-bashing, in the character of Howard Mollison. He is in some sense the "villain" of the book, being the leader of the don't-help-poor-people faction, though in his actions he is by far not the worst person in the book. He is "jovial, extravagantly gallant and courteous" in the security of his position as unchallenged ruler of his little town. And he is very fat:
He was an extravagantly obese man of sixty-four. A great apron of stomach fell so far down in front of his thighs that most people thought instantly of his penis when they first clapped eyes on him, wondering when he had last seen it, how he washed it, how he managed to perform any of the acts for which a penis is designed.
Unlike Dudley or Vernon Dursley, Mr. Mollison doesn't face insults or ridicule for his weight from other characters or the narration. He is more like Professor Slughorn, complacent and content with his life and his appearance:
Howard thought about what Dr. Jawanda had said about his weight: that it was the source of all his health problems.
Nonsense, obviously. Look at the Hubbards' boy: built like a beanpole, and shocking asthma. Howard had always been big, as far back as he could remember. In the very few photographs taken of him with his father, who had left the family when Howard was four or five, he was merely chubby. After his father had left, his mother had sat him at the head of the table, between herself and his grandmother, and been hurt if he did not take seconds. Steadily he had grown to fill the space between the two women, as heavy at twelve as the father who had left them. Howard had come to associate a hearty appetite with manliness. His bulk was one of his defining characteristics. It had been built with pleasure, by the women who loved him, and he thought it was absolutely characteristic of Bends-Your-Ear, that emasculating killjoy, that she wanted to strip him of it.
Or, I should say, he doesn't face insults or ridicule except for one dramatic public scene where his addiction to food is compared to drug addiction.
However, as in the first description of Howard, the narrative voice is pitiless, scatalogical, and sexual and throughout the book we see many references to his largeness as he literally throws his weight around in crowds and to the health consequences of his obesity, including shortness of breath, a rash, and a serious heart attack. Certainly, it can be experienced as fat-bashing, though every character (or perhaps I should say nearly every character) is described in a similarly unpleasant way. Nearly every character in the book has a self-destructive obsession or addiction, and most are described with unappealing physical details. Some, such as Terri Weedon and Maureen Lowe, are unpleasantly (very unpleasantly) thin.
Two other characters are described as overweight: Tessa Wall, one of the nicer characters, who is "short and dumpy" and has just been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, and Miles Mollison, Howard's son, who reads as one of the bad guys though we never see him do anything particularly bad. Miles is "paunchy" and seems to have a bit of middle-age spread (possibly exaggerated by his unhappy wife's point of view). Oh, and Howard's wife, Miles's mother, Shirley Mollison is "plump" and "pretty" and "trim" and a truly terrible human being.
I don't really know what to say about all this. Certainly some people have read it as fat-bashing. To me, it feels more like Howard's obesity is just one of many ways the people in the book have of being screwed up by others and themselves, and causing harm to themselves and others. On the other hand, I can read Howard's massiveness and Shirley's trim plumpness and Miles's creeping spread as a metaphor for the heavy uncaring inertia of society that makes it so hard to change things for the better and help those who are hurting.
Moving on to the Cormoran Strike books, I don't have the impression that weight or other appearance issues has nearly as much importance in them. The hero himself is somewhat overweight--25 or 30 pounds. He is referred to as "fat" by some people who don't like him, but it seems to concern him only because it aggravates the difficulties he has with his amputated leg. He is not particularly attractive in appearance but that doesn't seem to worry him much, though he is sensitive about his disability.
Robin, on the other hand, is conventionally attractive. Her weight is mentioned in the third book when she is dieting before her wedding:
"Why are you only having a salad? Aren't you hungry?" asked Strike, clearing his plate of chips. As Robin had suspected, his mood had improved with the ingestion of carbohydrates.
"Wedding," said Robin shortly.
Strike said nothing. Comments on her figure fell strictly outside the self-imposed boundaries he had established for their relationship, which he had determined from the outset must never become too intimate. Nevertheless, he thought she was becoming too thin. In his opinion (and even the thought fell outside those same boundaries), she looked better curvier.
This could be seen as a fairly heavy-handed and awkward "message" to girls and young women not to worry about being super-thin (because the guys don't like it anyway, which is what matters, amirite?). I'd rather see it as an opportunity to slip a bit of shipping in, as Strike sternly tells himself not to think about things like that.
I don't know anything about weight issues in the "Cursed Child" play (and possibly Rowling won't have much input into the casting) but one of the four main characters of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" is a plump man, which I suspect is due to how he was written in the script. It will be interesting to see how his character develops, but to be quite honest I've already written far more about this issue than my amount of interest in it warrants and I'll move on to the next topic, which is ... PLOT HOLES.
The Target of Perfection at Which We Shoot in Vain
Known Rowling-worshipper though I am, even I can admit that there are sometimes problems with the plotting, consistency, and logic of the Harry Potter series. As I put it in my unfinished review of Deathly Hallows:
while I can perfectly understand an aesthetic preference for authors with tighter logic, more consistency, and more rigorous editing, this is J.K. Rowling we're talking about. She is as she has always been - brilliant, sloppy, and secretive, her inventive genius outstripping her dutiful attempts to keep all her details straight.
Of course there are strong reasons--one might even say excuses--for why we occasionally found what we called plot holes in the Harry Potter story:
• Magic. Magical plots are inherently tricky, especially when they include factors such as time travel, mind-reading, conjuring things out of thin air, and instant transportation (Apparation). "Why didn't they just ....?" questions are bound to be numerous. All sorts of unknowns and complications must be invented and explained.
• Scope. The size and complexity of the work is simply enormous: seven books, some of them very long, essentially all telling the story of what happened Halloween night 1981. Everything either leads up to that momentous event or follows from it, and it is revealed with agonizing slowness over the seven novels. I'll just say ... it was a difficult task she set herself.
• Success. After the first couple of books, the incredible sales figures put a lot of pressure on Rowling. She was under extreme time pressure, both from the clamoring of the fans and the needs of the publishers, booksellers, etc. for whom the Harry Potter books were literally their livelihood. She strove to meet her deadlines and when she turned in the books, her publishers did their level best to get them to market as fast as possible. And because of the insatiable demand for spoilers and hints, they had to preserve an almost unprecedented level of secrecy, making it impossible to have many eyes checking the manuscripts. She did not even share them with her husband, her children, or her sister. Then, when the books were published, millions of readers scoured them for errors and discussed them ad nauseum online.
Her subsequent books, though, have none of these three factors. So how do they do in terms of logical consistency and freedom from errors? I'd say they do quite well.
The Casual Vacancy does not have the kind of plot that lends itself to "holes" and I must say I don't see any problems with it. The three Cormoran Strike books, however, are procedural mysteries, a complex and demanding genre with many opportunities to mess up the plot. The crime must make sense, in the first place, then the investigators' investigations must be reasonable and motivated, following a comprehensible trail of clues, and at the same time information must be carefully dribbled out to the readers in a way that makes it possible but unlikely that they will figure out the crime before the main character in the book does. This is complicated enough that I probably should have included "Mystery" as another factor that makes the Harry Potter series vulnerable to plot holes but come to think of it, that's pretty much covered under "Scope." And, honestly, though it is often pointed out that the Potter books are mysteries, they do not necessarily have to be "fair" mysteries since they are not in that genre and don't have to follow its rules.
I will say that I think the Cormoran Strike mysteries are NOT full of plot holes but are on the contrary quite tight and well done, as mystery novels go. This is not to say I don't have little carps and criticisms here and there but I have rarely read a mystery novel (and I have read MANY mystery novels) where that is not true. In the interest of completeness (and because I feel like it), I will list my little carps and criticisms here:
• The Cuckoo's Calling. This is not something I noticed myself but my daughter says that the chronology is messed up: "At one point there were three Thursdays in the same week. At one point a Wednesday came after a Monday, and at another point a Thursday came after a Monday." I haven't checked to see if I agree with this criticism. The only thing that bothered me when I read the book was I doubted if Strike would really have been able to figure out everything he did about the makeup artist who was nosy and dyslexic from the information presented. I certainly wouldn't have. [ETA: Oh, and the thing with the water droplets!]
• Silkworm. This is the novel I had the most problems with. The motive for the crime was perfectly clear and reasonable. However, I did not understand the motive for doing the crime in the weird and elaborate way it was done. I also did not understand Strike's motives for doing what he did to catch the crook in the end, especially the part with the cab. If anyone understood it, I would love an explanation! [ETA: My daughter has successfully convinced me that the way the crime was done is perfectly logical and in character for the murderer. I still don't understand the cab, though.]
• Career of Evil. I thought this book was exceptionally well-constructed, especially the difficult task of having the murderer's narrative throughout without giving away the murderer's identity. I just had two little problems. One is that I thought it unfair that one particular person's height was not specifically described. Can't say anything more without spoiling the book. Another, which might just be my denseness, is that I didn't understand something about facial hair. Again, can't discuss without spoiling.
Obviously I don't know yet if The Cursed Child and/or Fantastic Beasts will be subject to criticisms along these lines. They will be vulnerable in that they will concern magic, which is always tricky. I don't think they will be vulnerable in terms of scope, or success/time pressure factors. I don't know if either of them will attempt a mystery format. But I hope so!
Well, this is already pretty long and the next two topics, Morality/Messages and Romance, are way more fascinating to me than Weight Prejudice and Plot Holes. So I will stop here and attempt to be more entertaining in Part 3.