Philip Hensher

Smackhead cows in the backyard

Philip Hensher is unimpressed by J. K. Rowling’s much heralded move into adult fiction

issue 29 September 2012

Krystal had never shot up before … but she knew how to heat the spoon, and about the tiny little ball of cotton wool you used to soak up the dissolved smack, and act as a filter when you were filling the syringe. She knew that the crook of the arm was the best place to find a vein, and she knew to lay the needle as flat as possible against the skin.

Yes, J.K.Rowling is back — though I have to admit, I don’t myself recall passages like this in the Harry Potter sequence, nor all the f***s and c***s or detailed descriptions of a teenage boy’s enthusiasm for porn. It seems unlikely they appeared in the 300-odd pages of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that were left when I finally abandoned it, unable to put up with it any longer.

After the end of the Harry Potter cavalcade, J.K.Rowling

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