Spenser and Strike Part Seven: Changes for the Better

Long overdue, but here, at last, is the seventh installment in our series on Edmund Spenser’s Strike influence. As we suspected from the first preview peeks at the Table of Contents for Troubled Blood, The Faerie Queene’s influence for this installment of the Denmark Street mysteries goes far beyond catchy little opening quotations to get the reader’s attention at the beginnings of sections and chapters. Rowling-Galbraith has skillfully woven in connections with Edmund Spenser’s grand epic poem, and delightfully mirrors the structure of the poem with the structure of the novel. As we’ve now reached the end, that brings us to Part Seven of Troubled Blood and the (sadly) incomplete Book VII of The Faerie Queene, so join me after the jump for seven thoughts about the great connections between these short ending pieces of really long texts!

The posts in this series in sequence can be found at these embedded links:

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Troubled Blood: Questions for Rowling-Galbraith from US & UK Serious Strikers

If you have watched the ‘Robert Galbraith Troubled Blood‘ interview and your experience is like mine, you left the fifteen minutes of actual questions disappointed at the wasted opportunity. Rowling will almost certainly not do another ‘event’ on the subject — with Troubled Blood topping the best sellers lists in the States and Great Britain, why should she? — and this softball exchange told Serious Strikers, Potter Pundits, and Rowling Researchers next to nothing.

Just one ‘for instance’ to make a point of what a blown chance this was. One third to half of her time was dedicated to praise for the teevee adaptations of the Strike series and the actor and actress playing Strike and Robin. I get that producers had an obligation of sorts to keep non-readers interested (and to promote teevee viewing) but the only interview with the world’s best selling author about her longest novel ever largely turns on Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger? Egad.

Let’s pretend for a moment that Rowling, Inc., was as disappointed as we were in this interview rather than the very people who chose the questions, wrote, taped, and edited her responses, and presented it as exactly as it stands. That’s a real stretch even for professional pretenders, I know, but it is a necessary imaginative leap for the exercise I want to propose.

Please tell me what you would ask Rowling-Galbraith if she were drunk on Veritaserum and the interview was filmed live.

What are the three questions you would ask Rowling-Galbraith about Troubled Blood?

Post your questions in the comment boxes below by clicking on ‘Comments’ in the space beneath the post’s title line. Make a naïve wish as you blow out the candles on Robin Ellacott’s birthday cake, a wish that The Presence sees them and will answer. I share my three questions for the author-who-must-tell-the-truth after the jump. Thank you in advance for writing out your questions and sharing your thoughts about the interview, especially, if, unlike me, you thought it was a brilliant Q&A that really opened up the artistry and meaning of Troubled Blood! [Read more…]

Troubled Blood: Galbraith Interview

Hat tip to Nick Jeffery and Patricio Tarantino!

Beatrice Groves: Trouble in Faerie Land

Beatrice Groves, author of Literary Allusion in Harry Potter, has written two posts about Edmund Spencer and Troubled Blood, posts that are now up at her MuggleNet page.

‘Trouble in Faerie Land (Part One): Spenserian Clues in the Epigraphs of Troubled Blood‘ and ‘Troubles in Faerie Land (Part Two): Shipping Robin and Strike in the Epigraphs of Troubled Blood‘ are up and ready for your perusal and edification.

Spencer Fans should also check out the musings of Elizabeth Baird-Hardy, author of Milton, Spenser and the Chronicles of Narnia: Literary Sources for the C.S. Lewis Novels, about the Spenser epigraphs used in each of the seven parts of Troubled Blood:

Enjoy!

Troubled Blood: The Dead Among Us

I wrote in my first notes on Troubled Blood, a discussion of Part One’s seven chapters released pre-publication,  that the comment “the wraith of Leda seemed to drift on [Strike’s] cigarette smoke around him” in the Cornwall garden chapter four scene pointed to supernatural influence being a likely theme of Strike5. 

Rowling like Nabokov populates her books with ghosts, seen and unseen; see W. W. Rowe’s Nabokov’s Spectral Dimension for a book-length treatment of this subject and Brian Boyd’s brilliant Nabokov’s Pale Fire for the importance of ghosts in VVN’s best work. I think we’re meant to pay special attention, consequently, in Troubled Blood to revelations Strike experiences while smoking, especially if they involve events or persons Leda may have known. Strike’s mysterious openness to taking the Bamborough case may have been because he was smoking when the two women approached him in chapter two. 

Having finished Troubled Blood‘s seven parts, I think I was right about the dead subtly directing the action of the novel. Join me after the jump for three markers I think Rowling-Galbraith leaves of other-worldly or spiritual influence in Strike 5 and her hidden spiritual message in a book that some may read as a celebration of occult arts. [Read more…]