The conifer hedges in front of J. K. Rowling's seventeenth-century house, in Edinburgh, are about twenty feet tall.They reach higher than the street lamps in front of them, and evoke the entrance to the spiteful maze in the film adaptation of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", the fourth volume of her fantasy series.
J. K. 羅琳在愛丁堡的古宅始建于17世紀，門前的針葉樹樹籬約有20英尺高。它們高出旁立的街燈，讓人想起電影《哈利波特與火焰杯》中險惡(危機四伏)的迷宮入口。這部電影正是J. K. 羅琳所著魔幻巨著哈利波特系列的第四卷。
The conifer hedges 針葉樹籬笆
evoke ?產生或引起(感情、回憶)
spiteful 懷恨的，惡意的
maze 迷宮，迷魂陣
Goblet 高腳杯
Rowling, who, at forty-seven, is about to publish her first novel for adults—it is set in a contemporary Britain familiar with Jay-Z and online pornography, but is shaded with memories of her own, quite cheerless upbringing—lives here with her second husband, Neil Murray, a doctor, and their children.
現年47的J. K. 羅琳，將出版第一本她寫給成人讀者的小說。這部小說的背景設在說唱歌手杰斯與網上色情大行其道的當代英國(小說設定在當代英國，一個嘻哈音樂會和網絡色情盛行的國家)，但描述中又帶有她個人回憶的印記(夾雜了她個人凄慘的成長經歷)，那是一段平淡到了無生趣(平淡無奇)的曾經——與她第二任丈夫尼爾·穆萊里，一位醫生，以及他們的孩子們一同生活的經歷。
is shaded with
cheerless 慘淡的
Jay-Z ?說唱歌手杰斯
pornography 色情刊物電影
She has a reputation for reserve: for being likable but shy and thin-skinned, and not at all comfortable with the personal impact of having created a modern myth, sold four hundred and fifty million books, and inspired more than six hundred thousand pieces of Harry Potter fan fiction, a total that increases by at least a thousand stories a week.
她出了名的保守，她友善而內斂，敏感又害羞。她筆下的故事創造了銷量超過4.5億冊的當代奇跡，也激發了哈迷們的創作靈感，衍生出60多萬本同人小說，且其數量以一周至少一千個故事的數速度增加。盡管她獲得了諸多榮耀，J. K. 羅琳本人卻對隨之而來的名聲大噪無所適從。
thin-skinned (easily hurt by criticism or easily made unhappy)
