JK Rowling novel attacks poverty and politicians

JK ROWLING, the author of the Harry Potter novels, has criticised the growing gulf of inequality in modern Britain on the eve of the publication of her new novel.

The world’s wealthiest ­author, who began her career as an unemployed single mother writing in Edinburgh cafes, criticised politicians’ inability to appreciate the many reasons behind poverty in Britain today.

Rowling, whose books have sold more than 450 million copies, said the theme of new crime novel, The Casual Vacancy, which she started writing five years ago and which tackles rural poverty, has become more relevant since the election of the coalition government and the cuts in social security benefits.

In an interview Rowling said: “The poor are discussed as this homogeneous mash, like porridge. The idea that they might be individuals, and be where they are for very different, diverse reasons, again seems to escape some people.

“They talk about feckless teenage mothers looking for a council flat. What would your life be like if that’s the only possible path you can see for yourself? But I don’t know if that’s a question some people ask themselves.

“There has been a horribly familiar change of atmosphere [since the 2010 election]. It feels to me a lot like it did in the early 1990s, where there’s been a bit of redistribution of benefits and suddenly lone-parent families are that little bit worse off.

“But it’s not a ‘little bit’ when you’re in that situation. Even a tenner a week can make such a vast, vast difference. Though I started writing this [her novel] five years ago when we didn’t have a coalition government, it’s become maybe more relevant as I’ve written.”

She added: “How many of us are able to expand our minds beyond our personal experience?

“So many people, certainly people who sit around the Cabinet table, say: ‘Well, it worked for me’ or ‘This is how my father managed it’ – these trite catchphrases – and the idea that other people might have had such a different life experience that their choices and beliefs and behaviours would be completely different from your own seems to escape a lot of otherwise intelligent people.”

The new novel is set around the election of a new parish councillor and the attempts of the council chairman to reassign responsibility for a sink estate to a neighbouring council.

The book portrays contemporary rural poverty through Terri Weedon, a prostitute, heroin addict and victim of abuse who is trying to keep social services from taking her three-year-old son into care. Rowling said she mined her own upbringing near the Forest of Dean for material.