Introducing... Robert Galbraith

When you've sold around 500 million copies of your novels, which then spawned a blockbuster film franchise and billions of pounds worth of merchandise, how boring it must be. Ok, so you've generated an industry worth billions of dollars - not so boring - but how on earth do you begin to move beyond it?

When Robert Galbraith came on the scene in April 2013 with his debut novel, The Cuckoo's Call, a classic crime set in London's Soho, he received great reviews - none of them steeped in decade-old criticism or referring to something he may have said five years ago. An enviable position, you might say. So you can understand how disappointed Mr. Galbraith would have been when his little secret came out that he was, in fact, JK Rowling.

Well its publishers, Little, Brown, are sure to sell just a few more copies of that novel... Got to give it to JK though, good effort.

Examples of some reviews:

The Cuckoo's Calling reminds me why I fell in love with crime fiction in the first place

(Val McDermid)

A scintillating debut novel . . . Galbraith delivers sparkling dialogue and a convincing portrayal of the emptiness of wealth and glamour

(The Times, Saturday Review)

One of the most unique and compelling detectives I've come across in years

(Mark Billingham)

The most engaging British detective to emerge so far this year . . . An astonishingly mature debut from Galbraith, it marks the start of a fine crime career

(Daily Mail online)

And my favourite...

JK Rowling secretly wrote a book under a different name. How very Half-Blood Prince of her. The Dark Lord (@Lord_Voldemort7)

Book meets Bikini

So you know how I love to squeeze literary relevance into my blog via some of the least book-related posts ever? Well this one came to me fully formed... didn't need any effort on my part whatsoever to fit under the 'literary' umbrella, except perhaps by labelling this post 'Adaptation'...

Anyway, this weekend is promising to be another scorcher. Bet you've always wanted a bikini to match your summer read... Matchbook can sort you out with just that. This is just.. ingenious. Love it. Question is, can you guess the book for the bikini? Take a look at these and then look online at http://matchbook.nu/ to see how you did.

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

The love affair between Maurice Bendrix and Sarah, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends when she suddenly and without explanation breaks it off. After a chance meeting rekindles his love and jealousy two years later, Bendrix hires a private detective to follow Sarah, and slowly his love for her turns into an obsession.

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene is one of those books that has been recommended to me millions of times. 'It'll be one of the best books you'll ever read,' people kept saying.

In so many ways, it looked to be the perfect book for me. A bit of romance, the background of the Blitz in 1940s London and a split narrative. Unfortunately, I didn't fall quite in love with it.

I think I have to admit here, though, that for various reasons this tiny book took me three weeks to read and I really can't blame that on Graham. I also had all the expectations set up by said annoying people above. And I will try and blame them. Perhaps they only loved it because it's 200 pages and so it was one of the only books everyone managed to finish... Ok, becoming a little bitchy now. That aside, I guess it came down to just not loving the characters entirely. In the first few chapters Maurice just seemed to be a right drip who had fallen for a someone who really wasn't very nice. So why would I care whether or not they got together?

Saying that, this book initiated one of those lovely situations when the book club makes me think a bit harder. It got me past my frustration with taking so long to read it and made me realise how intricate this novel was, despite it being short. It asked all the big questions about love, religion, war... and I loved that. This is something Greene addressed in his literary criticism, where he condemned the characters of modernists like Virginia Woolf and EM Forster for "wander[ing] about like cardboard symbols through a world that is paper-thin" as the writers lacked any religious sense.

There is, therefore, something in this book for everyone. For me, I may not have been swept up by the characters as other might have been, but I enjoyed seeing how groups of people come together, affect one another, misunderstand each other and all, ultimately, face these big questions and ideas.

There are some weird random threads that run parallel to the main narrative, but they probably all provide some extra nugget, even if I haven't quite worked out what, why or how just yet. With that in mind, I think this book would have been a perfect novel to study. Plenty to look out for and all those wonderful themes and imagery that examiners jump up in the air and do a little happy dance about.

All in all, the book got 7/10 from the book club and 6.5/10 from me.

2nd July 1961 - Ernest Hemingway commits suicide

On 2nd July 1961, Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize-winning author and journalist, committed suicide. He was sixty one years old.

Towards the end of the 1950s, it seemed as though Hemingway had started, in some ways, to lose control of his writing. Having been commissioned by Life Magazine to write a series of articles of approximately 10,000 words, Hemingway headed off to Spain to research. On his return, Hemingway started work on a manuscript that would become 130,000 words long. Feeling out of control, frustrated, confused and drastically outside his brief, Hemingway called friend and editor A E Hotchner to help him cut it down. Although the piece was ultimately published, Hotchner was concerned for Hemingway's well-being, describing him as "unusually hesitant, disorganized, and confused".

This was just the start of a tragic downhill spiral for the talented writer, who would soon start to suffer from deterioration in his eyesight, growing paranoia and a fear for his safety.

Sadly Ernest was not the only Hemingway to commit suicide. It is believed Hemingway suffered similar symptoms to his own father, Clarence, who also committed suicide, as did  his sister Ursula, brother Leicester and granddaughter, Margaux.

Relevant posts:

The First Forty-Nine Stories by Ernest Hemingway

The Paris Wife

Hemingway Look-a-like Contest