J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy, arrived in bookstores yesterday. According to advance reports, the new book contains lots of sex (in the form of "a miraculously unguarded vagina" and a used condom that is "like the gossamer cocoon of some huge grub"), domestic abuse and an endless stream of misery unrelieved by Cheering Charms or Patronuses (Patroni?). Instead, New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani wrote, "this novel for adults is filled with a variety of people like Harry's aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley."
Is this what Harry Potter would have been like without magic, dismal and Muggley with young Harry carted off to an asylum, his spirit broken after the years of abuse he had to endure at the hands of his relatives?
Which made us wonder: What if other beloved children's books had been written for an adult audience instead?
