J K Rowling, who had said that her next novel would be for adults, seems to have succeeded as the new tale is said to be one of class warfare, prostitution, heroin addiction and teen sexuality, according to sources. Days before its official launch, excerpts from her first book – ‘The Casual Vacancy’- in the post-’Harry Potter’ era have begun to emerge online and it is clear that it is for grown-up eyes only. A female character is introduced with the description that the ‘leathery skin of her upper cleavage radiated little cracks that no longer vanished when decompressed’. Although some fans may be upset by the direction she has taken, Rowling insists she should be free to write about whatever she wants. “There is no part of me that feels I represented myself as your children’s babysitter or their teacher,” the Daily Mail quoted her as saying. “I was always, I think, completely honest. “I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write,” she said. The 47-year-old writer, who has sold 450 million ‘Harry Potter’ books worldwide and amassed a personal fortune of 560 million pounds, also revealed that she was ready for a change in genre after years of writing magical tales. “I had a lot of real-world material in me, believe you me,” she told the New Yorker magazine. “The thing about fantasy – there are certain things you just don’t do. You don’t have sex near unicorns. It’s an ironclad rule. It’s tacky,” she said. However, she insisted that her decision to write for adults was ‘not that I just wanted to write about… sex’. “I think there is a through-line,” she said. “Mortality, morality, they are the two things I obsess about,” she added. According to Waterstones, ‘The Casual Vacancy’, which is due to be published on Thursday, has already broken the record foe receiving the largest number of in-store pre-order sales in 2012.
