JENNIFER PLATT | JK won’t be troubling me with any hot-blooded taboos in this one

I must confess that I am reading Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith, who is actually JK Rowling. It’s not a cool thing to admit to as Rowling is now persona non grata pretty much the world over due to her inflammatory statements. Just read this.

So far, eeek, I think that it’s okay but not great. (Please don’t come at me. Pretty please.) I’m not the only one reading it. It has gone straight to number one on the UK charts and Amazon, selling, in the second week, more than double the previous Strike novel, Lethal White.

I lugged it with me to pass the time waiting for the dentist (it’s 927 pages) and only when I was at the practice did I think I might get into trouble if someone noticed and took offence to it. So I quickly stashed it in my tote bag (best for carrying tomes and kitchen sinks).

It got me thinking of all the times I had to hide other books that I was reading. When I was a tween I started reading my mom’s Mills & Boon books. I remember my mother busting me when I tried to hide one between the folds of my setwork Lord of the Flies by William Golding, which I had no interest in reading at all. But I did read the setwork eventually and it disturbed me. It still does, more than all the innocuous pre-50 Shades boss-falls-for-secretary romances that I can hardly remember now. 

Other than the Mills & Boons I had to sneakily read, our bookshelves were open for everyone in the family to read whatever they wanted. There were no limitations. I read everything about four times or more on those shelves. There were the horrors of Dean R Koontz (when he still had the R in his name). I particularly remember Watchers and hardly understanding what the deal was with the superdog. It’s not particularly great by any Stephen King standards but it left me a taste for the bizarre.

What was also bizarre was that nearly every family in my hood had a copy of Shirley Conran’s Lace. Whenever I saw it in a friend’s home, I was always taken aback that they would have that bonkbuster proudly displayed on their shelves. And why did everyone have it? Was it sold at OK Bazaars? At church fetes? It was clearly an inappropriate book for a teen and so I read it on the down-low.

Then there was my Flowers in the Attic phase. To this day, I don’t think my parents knew at all what I was reading and I’m pretty sure, no matter how laissez-faire their approach was towards books, they would have asked me not to read Virgina Andrews’s perverted tales. I remember taking it from the reading pile in the library: the one at the front where books were processed but not yet shelved. I was completely horrified. The series by Andrews was twisted with a whole lot of taboos not explored back then (child murder, incest, rape). It has disturbed many a young reader as one user on Reddit admitted: “Flowers in the Attic is one of those books that scars you for life.”

It’s fascinating what books stick in your brain and scar you for life. Sometimes it is the ones that you are forbidden or embarrassed to read. But somehow, I don’t think that Troubled Blood will be leaving a mark on me.