• Running Grave, Part Zero: A Ring Reading

    ByNick Jeffery
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    The Prologue as a Ring Structure

    Being far more of a paragon of patience, our Headmaster Dr John Granger has been delaying his gratification of completing The Running Grave by charting each part of the book into (hopefully) a classical ring structure complete with latch, turn and turtleback. Currently you can see his results of Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

    I was very privileged to be given an almost complete day tutorial on ring structure with John when he visited Wales this Summer using The Ink Black Heart as a text. This was a remarkable act of generosity when you consider he was only in the country for a few days, and one was already reserved for accepting his doctorate from Swansea University.

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  • Running Grave: Part Three Ring Reading

    ByNick Jeffery
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    Four More Weeks at Chapman Farm in Circles and Squares

    This is the third in a nine part series of posts in which I will be reading Rowling-Galbraith’s seventh Cormoran Strike novel, Running Grave, as if each of its nine Parts or chapter sets were books themselves. I’m doing this because Rowling has in previous books, most notably Troubled Blood, written the Parts of her novels in the same structural form that she does the book as a whole and the series of books taken in a set, a traditional story scaffolding called ring composition (see the first post in this series for an introduction to that).

    The idea, in a nutshell, is to read Running Grave as if it were a Dickens novel, a super-long book best read as nine, serialized, semi-stand-alone parts.

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  • Running Grave, Part Two: A Ring Reading

    ByNick Jeffery
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    The Telling of Robin’s First Week at Chapman Farm is a 17 chapter Ring Composition (and More)

    It took me the better part of a week to read, chart, and write up a post about Part One of Running Grave. I confess to dreading that process for Part Two but I was able to read it, chart it, and make the legible picture for this post above in less than eight hours.

    Why was it so much easier? Because it wasn’t a chapter by chapter adventure in finding parallels across the story axis, not to mention it was shorter and there were only two interview information-dumps. In Part Two, Rowling has a simplified chapter sequence; with two exceptions (chapters 25 and 34-36) after the start, we are given two chapters of Robin-at-the-farm followed by two chapters of Strike-at-work-in-London (and environs) followed by two Robin chapters, repeat to finish. If you count their time together as ‘Strike’ chapters at the start, each gets four turns in the spotlight in alternation.

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  • Running Grave, Part One: A Ring Reading

    ByNick Jeffery
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    Reading Rowling’s Latest As If It Were a Dickens Novel Serial: First Thoughts about Chapters

    I confess to being of at least two minds with respect to how I should read Rowling’s latest novel.

    I want to read it the way I read any book I like — straight-through, one sitting, all-nighters as often as not. I miss a lot that way, of course; I’m reading for plot points only and the imaginative immersive experience, not for structural and artistry fine points which are essentially invisible in a speed read. I have read the six Fiona Griffiths novels by Harry Bingham that way last month and Lou Berney’s brilliant Dark Ride just last week.

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  • Nick Jeffery – The Running Grave Review

    ByNick Jeffery
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    The Running Grave is another mammoth of a book at well over nine hundred pages in the print edition, and with the audio book over 34 hours, this is the longest book of the series. At this rate we have 3,000 pages left in the Strike-Ellacott saga, which is only 400 short of the whole Harry Potter canon.

    Despite it’s size the pace of the book clips along at a fair rate of knots, helped by a good deal nervous energy and excitement. The cast of thousands never seemed oppressive, being neatly compartmentalised between the UHC, the agency, the families and clients. I found myself having to resist the urge read too quickly (as I did with The Ink Black Heart to the detriment of my enjoyment of that book). Straight out of the gate this is my favourite of the series by some margin, and after four days reading the print and digital edition, I am now re-reading via the Robert Glenister narrated audiobook.

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