JK’s review of sturgeon’s shite book

[Tootsweets23]

Glory be, for it is here https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/the-twilight-of-nicola-sturgeon-j-k-rowling-reviews-frankly/

JKR got a hard time back when the referendum happened because she was not only a No voter, she helped fund the Better Together campaign to the tune of £1M. That’s always been a sore point for Scottish independence supporters. Loads of people that fit that description are right in the middle of the Terven pushback, and JKR’s presence within the Terven has been welcomed. Some won’t appreciate the harking back to the Yes/No divide where ultimately the No vote triumphed. And some of the comments are challenging her claim that Sturgeon’s aim of independence was her focus - given how badly she’s handled that, it’s a fair point.

JKR has talent and heart.
Everything the SNP leadership touches turns to this ^^
It's the perfect metaphor. An idiot with a huge ego steering the scooter, lackies in tow. Puts his foot in it, literally, and it all goes tits up. Scotland under the SNP time and time again.
NS was exactly the same.

I hope Rowling enjoyed writing that as much as I did reading it.

I've got the impression that some politicians-far more that are right wing- actively enjoy a robust debate/pub ding-dong with people that disagree with them. They see it as a core part of politics and a chance to fully flex their arguments and adapt them to new challenges. Sturgeon seems to find the existence of people who disagree with her physically disgusting and offensive.

Sturgeon’s alleged imposter syndrome and constant crises of confidence don’t prevent her admitting to ‘the raw talent I had for politics’, or that ‘I certainly wasn’t lacking in ability’, that ‘far from being the weak link, I was seemingly the star attraction’, ‘it all added to the sense that I had the Midas touch’ or that ‘there is no doubt that I was a massive electoral asset.’ [My bold]

Are those actual quotes from the book? Holy moly!

That's actually one of the weird things for me, and JKR as a unionist might have a slight blind spot here. I'm not sure that NS really is fanatical about independence. There were plenty of older generation SNP types, and there still are some, for whom it's an all consuming passion, but it's never seemed to me that NS was one of them. I think it's a position she holds because her tribe requires it.

I'm not even sure why it's her tribe. Like Kath Stock says, NS's account of how Neil Kinnock's Labour Party didn't appeal to her as a teenage socialist makes sense if you overlook her then joining Gordon Wilson's SNP, which was still full of rural social conservatives.

I can understand ideological fanaticism, though I don't like it, but I'm afraid I don't see that in NS - just her God complex and an unholy stubbornness when anyone says no to her.

Brilliant.

My takeaway was that if you want believable characters who develop and engage the reader with their experiences with the human condition, then Twilight is a cracking read. By contrast if you want two dimensional characters whose reactions to life are (literally) incredible, then Frankly is probably more up your street.

It is a genius piece of prose.

I agree @SionnachRuadh

I've said before that the SNP had ONE job, deliver Independence, that's what they were for. All they needed to do was keep the country running while they delivered on it. Sturgeon took her eye off the ball to concentrate on turning Scotland into the wokest of the woke.

On the last thread I posted this on, another poster replied that they thought she wanted Scotland to follow the Scandi model without regard to the different culture and challenges and I think there's a lot of truth in that.

ETA: Gordon Wilson's SNP was the SNP of my childhood and my family were very much rural social conservatives, it both saddens and angers me to see what it's become.

There are so many excellent quotes in JKR's piece, although like @DabOfPistachio, the one about opposition to a belief being seen as a moral failing stands out.

Talking of quotes, I particularly enjoyed this one from Kathleen Stock regarding Sturgeon: "If Frankly is anything to go by then, strictly speaking, Sturgeon never did have imposter syndrome. To have that particular malaise, your nagging suspicion that you aren't really up to the task has to be wrong".

That's pretty much my take too @Mochudubh

I maybe mentioned before, I keep thinking about a conversation I had about a dozen years ago with someone who was then a senior figure in Scotgov. He described Salmond as the vision guy and Swinney as the details guy (didn't mention Sturgeon). He said they worked on the premise that lots of Scots liked the idea of independence in principle but weren't confident it could work, and if they could run a reasonably competent government they were halfway to making their case.

They weren't doing the woke social engineering stuff at that point. That was all Sturgeon.

There's a guy in New Zealand called Chris Trotter who comes from the left but is kind of a free speech liberal these days. I don't know enough about NZ to know if he's right about their politics (he might not be!) but he's been banging on for years about NZ Labour abandoning their working class base for woke social engineering and an imaginary Scandi model. Ardern put that into overdrive, and almost everyone had turned against her in the end.

Like I say, I don't know if Trotter is right about the specifics, but I think he's seeing a similar thing to what lots of us around the world are seeing with the hollowing out of the parties and social institutions.

It didn't take too long for the hollowing out of the SNP to happen, and I'd love an honest inside account of how it happened.

I wonder if NS will be borrowing bits of this review to grace the slip cover of later editions ( Editorial note: assuming there are later editions not just piles of unsold copies bruising the innocent legs of unwary book shop assistants in the stock rooms of the nation's more perceptive booksellers). I think I have found a phrase that if only slightly doctored - OK radically surgically redacted and tweaked - that might do

” ……competent Sturgeon presided ……….Scotland continues to lead the whole of Europe” JK Rowling

Not sure. Love her kids’ books because the storylines are excellent. Really enjoy Strike, again good, strong storylines and realistic prose. Can’t say, though, that I’m seeing an enormous improvement in her writing since the Harry Potter days. I think “beautifully written” is something of an exaggeration.

Her writing is well crafted and stylish, as you might expect from someone who has made her name and her living through writing.

I do think there was an element of time, place and luck involved. Cracking stories and characters, absolutely. High literature, no. I do think there is a risk of over-egging when a person we greatly admire, for other reasons, is being discussed. Human nature.

Yes. For me too.
Eloquent and right to the heart of it.

I voted yes for independence in 2014. Thank god we lost! But not to derail too much on that subject.

Really enjoyed this review, as well as Kathleen Stock's in Unherd.

BBC piece on JKR’s review here

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd6n78z1d34o

JKR has offered to read her critique at the Edinburgh book festival. Can you imagine the staff meltdown?! 😂😂😂

The only way I'd be persuaded to read Krankie's book is if I could get my hands on JKR's full annotated version. The un-edited book is only suitable to be used as toilet paper, or the lining of a rodent cage perhaps.

That would be rather unfair on any poor, innocent rodents.

I have to say, as a linguist, that t-shirt is just wrong, It's not 'ni - kou - luh' but 'ni - kuh - luh'. Sorry for the lack of IPA, I can't be bothered to write it out and photograph it, but you'll get my point. I guess NS would also pronounce the 'r' in Sturgeon, but then many people wouldn't, including me.

As for Sturgeon on Isla the fragrant Bryson: ""Worst of all, I sounded like I didn't have the courage to stand behind the logical conclusion of the self-identification system we had just legislated for," she writes." So what does or did she really think? It's still not clear to me, and from comments I've seen she doesn't seem clear herself. But yes, it is absolutely a "logical conclusion" that one day she'd have to call a rapist female, and it's telling that she didn't follow through with it.

That would be rodent abuse 😆

Also now reported in the Times:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/434d1c46-3fc8-4cbf-8607-cf320e7dced2?shareToken=74e274ae00b6b4d69cc089057ea21db3

@SionnachRuadh It didn't take too long for the hollowing out of the SNP to happen, and I'd love an honest inside account of how it happened.

Apparently Joanna Cherry is writing a political memoir which will offer her perspective on what went wrong and the reasons for the lack of progress towards independence, the many policy failings, the increasing divisions in the SNP. and independence movement and the way the SNP became plagued scandals.

JKR could with all her money fuck off to a Caribbean island that she would of course own or mars though of course that might mean sharing with Elon twatface.
so she could be off and just say fuck the rest of you plebs who can’t do this
but she doesn’t
and that’s why I luves her