However, her publishers demanded the J.K. Rowling brand, and you can understand why. Under a different name I strongly doubt that it would have garnered overseas sales.
It’s an unexceptionable story of class warfare in an English village. None of the characters is at all likeable and the plot – replacing a member of the Parish Council who dies in the opening pages – is thin to the point of transparency. It should not have taken an additional 500 to reach its ho-hum conclusion.
The author is most comfortable, it seems, with those sections concerning the teenage schoolkids. They’re a ghastly bunch and so over-written I found myself skipping to return to the adults. Unfortunately, they’re not much better.
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