Is it possible to say “It didn’t feel like it was over 900 pages” without sounding like I’m trying to be funny?  I did enjoy The Running Grave.   I slowed down when there were “only” 200 pages remaining because I didn’t want it to be over.

Well, she can still write.

That said:  Do you have to read this?  No.  Does anything about the book override the author’s transphobic hate speech, making it a must-read?  No.

The usual checklist in the TERFpocalypse era

Race tokenism and fatphobia:  The same as ever.
Gender and queer issues:  Not as glaring as some other times, but basically no change.
Readability:  Much more digestible than the multimedia format of The Ink-Black Heart.
Connections to works by other authors:  Most notably to me, a Jane Eyre soulmate moment.

Goblet of Fire and trauma

I was fascinated to see that she reworked a significant decision from chapter 36 of Goblet of Fire.

After Harry returned from the maze, he realized, “Dumbledore was going to question him.  He was going to make Harry relive everything.”

Sirius said “harshly” that it could wait until morning and Harry should rest, but Dumbledore told Harry, “If I thought I could help you by putting you into an enchanted sleep and allowing you to postpone the moment when you would have to think about what has happened tonight, I would do it.  But I know better.  Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”

Was Dumbledore right?  I had friends who objected vehemently, saying it would have worsened the trauma to make Harry recount the events so soon, without a chance to rest first.

On page 627 of The Running Grave, Strike’s tack with Robin is different from Dumbledore’s.

‘You can tell me later,” said Strike.  ‘There’s plenty of time.’

He didn’t want to let her go, but he’d dealt with enough traumatised people in the army — had indeed been one of those people himself, after the car in which he’d been travelling had been blown up, taking half his leg with it — to know that being asked to re-live calamity in its immediate aftermath, when what was really needed was physical comfort and kindness, meant a debrief ought to wait.

Robin gets biscuits, some soup, and a brief nap before the police arrive to talk to her.

Snape

Rowling called Snape “a deeply horrible person” and seemed rather dismayed that some readers found aspects of him to be intriguing or even attractive.  In The Running Grave, she revisits Snape’s type in Mazu Wace, a woman with lank curtains of greasy dark hair, poor personal hygiene, and a terrifying demeanor.  But unlike Snape, she doesn’t have depths that reward rereading.  This time around, Rowling has succeeded in making the character unappealing.

Fantastic Beasts

With the Universal Humanitarian Church, Rowling revisits cult settings she explored in the first Fantastic Beasts film:  A woman who controls children.  Food deprivation.  Mind control.  A terrifying pool.  Robin in Tina’s role as someone who goes on a dangerous rescue mission.

I was glad to see this reprise.  It must have been so frustrating for a solo novelist to switch gears and write the Fantastic Beasts scripts, accountable foremost to the demands of the film industry.  The Cormoran Strike series is where this author is least beholden to anyone else.  The length of these barely-edited books attests to that — but it gladdens me, too, to see an author in a position to just publish as she pleases.  It more than makes up for the unwieldiness.  This is one of those areas where I find myself responding to her with reflexive feelings of kinship as a writer foremost, as though she were still the person I imagined her to be before the torrent of transphobic statements of recent years.  

“People have a tendency to think you’re using it”

One of the most painfully complicated elements of Rowling’s transphobic stance is that she draws upon her experience as a survivor of sexual assault to bolster the moral authority of her argument.  Among her works, the Strike books are where she works through these experiences most thoroughly.  I find truths in her writing about sexual assault at the same time that I’m horrified by how she uses her survivor status as a blunt instrument.  On page 762 of The Running Grave, one of Strike’s half-siblings accuses Robin of being “glib” about sexual assault and Robin tells her, in detail, that she’s speaking from personal experience.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Prudence, startled, ‘I didn’t know —
‘Well, I’d rather you still didn’t know,’ said Robin bluntly.  ‘I don’t really enjoy talking about it, and people have a tendency to think you’re using it, when you bring it up in discussions like this.’

Well…yes.  All of us are using our experiences when we… 

*Sigh.*

At any rate, it was noteworthy to me to see the author writing a discussion on this topic into her novel.

Bottom line

I enjoyed the book, I doubt I will reread it, and it was as good an occasion as any to send another $40 to the Transgender Law Center.