J.K. Rowling Talks to Stephen Fry

Posted on December 8, 2005

The Leaky Cauldron has excerpts from J.K. Rowling's interview on BBC Radio. The author of the Harry Potter books is interviewed by Stephen Fry (you may remember him best as Jeeves on the British series Jeeves and Wooster a few years back, although he is a popular novelist, as well.) She talks about approaching the end of the epic series.

Stephen Fry: Is it really true that you've got it [the end of the story] all planned out?

JK Rowling: Yes, I do know what's going to happen in the end. And occasionally I get cold shivers when someone guesses at something that's very close, and then I panic and I think "Oh, is it very obvious?" and then someone says something that's so off the wall that I think "No, it's clearly not that obvious!"

So much that happens in [book] six relates to what happens in [book] seven. In six, although there is an ending that could be seen as definitive in one sense, you very strongly feel the plot is not over this time and it will continue. It's an odd feeling, for the first time I'm very aware that I'm finishing.

*****

Stephen Fry: You've not held back from the difficult and the frightening [in your fiction].

JK Rowling: I feel very strongly that there is a move to sanitise literature because we're trying to protect children not from, necessarily, the grisly facts of life but from their own imaginations... And the child that has been protected from Dementors in fiction, I would argue, is much more likely to fall prey to them later in life in reality.

Ms. Rowling is still tormenting her fans by hinting that she will kill off the entire Potter gang, or just Harry perhaps. We're not buying it. Surely she won't kill off Harry?

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