The Ink Black Heart

by Robert Galbraith (audio version narrated by Robert Glenister)

I was once told by a teacher of writing that my intention to publish my own fiction pseudonymously was a very bad idea, and that ‘nobody’ would consider it a wise move for an author to write under a pen-name. I thought of Ibsen, Ferrante, Austen, the Brontës, Lee Child, John Le Carré and countless others. So, I ignored the advice.

My own reason for writing under a pen-name was simply that I wanted to write hard-boiled crime fiction to reflect my growing horror at real-world crime in South Africa, where I spent most of my life. I had no interest whatsoever in achieving recognition of my own ‘real’ identity in this endeavour. I wrote under a pen-name because I was interested in exploring the real world of crime and reflecting back, in fiction, my thoughts and feelings about the moral and ethical choices made by perpetrators of crime, victims of crime, and people working in the criminal justice system. I did not want friends, family, or colleagues to read these texts through the filter of what they knew (or thought they knew) about me. I was not seeking ‘kind’ or ‘supportive’ reviews of my writing. I was far more interested in the disinterested comments of strangers who knew nothing whatsoever about me and who would have no agenda other than expressing honest views, whether positive or negative, about my stories. Now, years after that decision, every few weeks I read new reviews on Amazon or Goodreads from complete strangers living in El Paso, or Santiago, or Salt Lake City or Auckland or Vancouver or Cape Town or other towns spread far and wide across the globe. They express what they like or don’t like about my books. I learn from their comments, knowing that because they have no need to please me, they are expressing honest views. It is a most satisfying experience. Pseudonymity, in other words, insulates my fictive writing from contamination by my real-world identity.

With that preamble about pen-names in mind, I started writing this short essay with no desire to proclaim the real name of the author who has chosen to write pseudonymously as Robert Galbraith. I thought, initially: ‘They’ve chosen to employ the pseudonym, and if I personally prefer to keep my own identity separate from the texts I have published under a pen-name, how dare I violate their similar wish?’

The trouble with that respectful intention, in the case of this specific book, is that The Ink Black Heart is suffused with the public persona and personal experiences of its real-life author. Indeed, it’s nigh-on impossible to do justice to an essay on the book without probing those real-world experiences and the public persona of J.K. Rowling, the author behind the pen-name. Note that I use the word ‘essay’ rather than ‘review’. My original intention to review the audiobook was hijacked by my shock at its reception by many commentators, purporting to review it but in fact aiming their venom and undisguised malevolence at the public figure that was J.K. Rowling (and in very many cases, demonstrably without having read the book).

My few comments are directed primarily, therefore, to this aspect of the book’s public reception. If I were to review the book in full I would discuss the author’s maturing craft as a writer through the Harry Potter phenomenon and into her post-Potter Casual Vacancy, a richly textured and nuanced novel about small-minded people and small-minded village politics. I would then move rapidly through the six Cormoran Strike crime novels, which, taken together, show a writer moving inexorably onwards and upwards, towards peak maturation.

The Ink Black Heart has attracted some well-founded and legitimate criticisms of the seemingly interminable sequences of chat-room text exchanges among various characters, who address one another in the truncated, brutal, short-hand discourse that permeates the world of social media conversations. Reviewers of the digital version have complained that in reading these exchanges the text does not format properly (although other reviewers reject such criticisms by saying that the readers in question are simply not using the font tools provided in their e-book hardware). Some commentators express frustration at what they see as tedious and repetitive discourse saturated with too many acronymic contractions of language. These are in my view legitimate complaints, although the audio version of The Ink Black Heart – brilliantly read by Robert Glenister – renders these passages more bearable (Glenister’s facility with accents and vocal characterisation are in fact a major positive feature in the audiobook).

Despite the comment above about the excesses, Rowling is right on top of the chat-room conventions and practices, as well as the anger, misogyny and misandry that saturates them. The malevolent bile and foul language is spewed out in private exchanges between participants sheltering behind anonymity in dark rooms. This counterpoints the violence that is actually perpetrated in the heinous crimes outside in the real world depicted by Rowling, where her detectives are on the hunt for the black-hearted murderer at the centre of the narrative.

As is well known, Rowling has real-world experience of the social media venom that she so expertly describes in the book. The reader is constantly aware of this, and the experience of reading or listening to the most abusive scenes in the textual exchanges between characters becomes inextricably intertwined with one’s assumption that Rowling herself has been through exactly such exchanges. There is a legitimate argument, in other words, that it would be inappropriate to discuss the book while referring to Galbraith as the author, rather than to Rowling. Readers are likely to be acutely aware of the narrative’s relevance to the public persona and social-media experiences of Rowling, and will read this book through that filter. Rowling’s enemies, of course, will in very many cases continue to spew their bile about the book without reading it.

For my part, I recommend it most heartily. It is more than an intriguing crime thriller. It is a commentary on and exposé of the ink-black hearts of lonely and damaged and dangerous individuals in dark chat-rooms as they communicate – pseudonymously – through social-media texting with faceless avatars rather than face-to-face conversations with humans.