Rowling pokes fun at Fifty Shades of Grey

The fiction writer prefers to call her latest work a “novel for grown-ups”.

NEW YORK:

Promoting her new adult novel The Casual Vacancy, Harry Potter creator JK Rowling finds it amusing that the most famous adult fiction of the moment is the erotic trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey. But, she says, there’s a big difference.

“The difference should be, people have sex in this book but no one really enjoys it,” she said of her own book at a reading in New York.

Rowling prefers to call her latest work a “novel for grown-ups,” noting that she does not want readers confused into thinking she has moved from the magical world of Hogwarts to something more like EL James’ wildly popular erotic books.

The Casual Vacancy is set in a small English town where class prejudices are played out and grown-up topics such as teenage sex, drug addiction and domestic abuse are addressed. It has hit the top of bestseller lists across the world despite mixed reviews since its release in September.

Asked at Tuesday’s event the question many parents across the world are wondering — how young is too young for fans wanting to read her new novel? — Rowling said: “I personally would be comfortable with the right 14 or 15-year-old reading this book,” but she discouraged those younger than that.

She recalled a recent London reading of the new book when a nine-year-old boy was present, and she tried repeatedly to warn the audience that it was a grown-up book before reading a particular passage. “The f-word occurred roughly every two sentences,” she said, raising laughs from the New York audience.

The seven books in the Harry Potter series have sold 450 million copies worldwide.

In its first six days, 375,000 copies of The Casual Vacancy were sold in the United States and Canada, according to a spokeswoman for publisher Little, Brown and Company.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 19^th, 2012.

Like Life & Style on Facebook and follow at @ETLifeandStyle for the latest in fashion, gossip, entertainment