Crush of the week: JK Rowling

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/21/jk-rowling-crush-of-week

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In 2007, I was working as a bookseller when the final Harry Potter book was released. At midnight, wearing a cape, I stood among frenzied fans as we opened the tills. Children, adults, many in fancy dress, all excited. I was, too, having read the books with my younger brother and loved them. Ostensibly, this was adoration for a boy wizard; really, it was the celebration of his creator, the author JK Rowling.

Everyone knows her story: a single mother on benefits who wrote her book in a cafe while her baby slept; the multiple rejections; the hardship; the success. It sounds like the plot of a Cinderella story she might have written. But the devil is in the detail – Rowling was not only the princess of the story: she was the witch who cast the spell, and the prince who saved herself. She is Harry Potter, albeit a 49-year-old female version.

Her self-made success, and her self-belief in an often indifferent world, are the ultimate pick-me-up for anyone who slings words on blank pages. Then there’s her commitment to charity (Lumos, which is concerned with children’s welfare), her reasons for staying in the UK and paying taxes (“I am indebted to the British welfare state… When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net… was there to break the fall”), her charming interactions with her fans.

Now her first work of adult fiction, The Casual Vacancy, has been adapted for TV. Rowling has written other books for grownups under a pseudonym, but her novel about life in modern Britain has found its perfect home on the small screen.

If Harry Potter is “the boy who lived”, then Rowling is “the woman who wrote”.

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