J. K. Rowling

Reread 2023: It's been so long since I read the later books in the series that, while I remember the main plot arc, I've forgotten a lot of the details. This made for a fun rediscovery of the Order of the Phoenix. I'd remembered this was where the series takes a much darker turn but I'd forgotten just how grim it was. I am impressed with how much depth and detail the book packs in. Poor Harry, so angry and irritated for most of the book. It's not without reason though it made some parts show more difficult to read. I usually hate when characters withhold information from each other but man that huge reveal with Dumbledore made a whole lot of sense. I loved how even Neville had some growth and more confidence. I wish we'd had a little more time with the new student addition, Luna. Dolores Umbridge is a near perfect villain, one that is so easy to hate. I had completely forgotten how she'd gotten her comeuppance and had thought she lasted another book. Guess I'll find out soon. show less

This is my third re-read of this book. My opinion of this book has never been very high compared to its predecessors. I think there are moments in it that are unparalleled and the ending is brilliant but i’ve always felt that Rowling hurried to end the book. “Caw! I’m at 500 pages and i haven’t even got them half way! I’d better DO something…”

Let me ‘splain.

We get 100 pages of the Trio camping and groping about for almost a year then the story moves again. We spend another show more 100 pages or so moving along nicely but then it all just comes together and Kings Cross happens as a cheesy moment of pure “let’s wrap it up” exposition and the book ends. It really felt rushed.

It occurred to me that it might have been better had Harry been alone at Kings Cross, discovering some of the things he was told there on his own and then, later, finding a hidden stash of Dumbledore’s memories hidden away, perhaps behind his portrait in the Headmaster’s office. Harry could have then learned about the nuance of everything without having to conjure forth Dumbledore.

My biggest problem is the Hallows themselves. Usually, Rowling is grand about weaving clues and precursors and foreshadowings into the fabric of each and every book. Everything is usually consistent and already there if you think about it. Like Sirius Black and his motorbike being mentioned in the first several pages of the very first book. It’s there, look it up. However, the only reference we have to the Hallows is a mention of the Peverell family in book 5 or 6. That’s it. Nothing else to even hint at it. Yes, the cloak is there all along and we can retroactively piece together the threads of the quest for the hallows like the Trio does in book 7 but nothing else is there. Not proper Rowling style. We don’t even hear about the hallows or their symbol until more than halfway through this book! For something that is supposed to have driven much of the entire series from behind the scenes, it should have been at least hinted at before. Bad form, JK.

And i do not believe for a second that neither Harry nor Hermione has never heard of Beedle the Bard. not for a millisecond. Especially Hermione. We’re supposed to believe that with all her poking about the library and absorbing facts from all kinds of disparate areas of the wizarding world no matter how trivial it might seem to others, that she didn’t ever come across references to those stories. Really? And as for Harry, can you imagine going through 6 years of BOARDING SCHOOL where you LIVE and never ever hearing about Mother Goose, the Brothers Grimm, or any fairy tale or nursery rhyme? Really? Sorry, but no. Rowling really goofed on that one. Simply not believable in the slightest. It’s a major problem for me.

Now, those are my problems with the story. Some of them, at least. The parts i like are glorious whether dark or uplifting. The final battle between Harry and Voldemort is perfect. Harry’s journey represents one of true enlightenment and self-actualization. His fully realizing what Dumbledore had taught him was awesome to behold. The fact that he offered Riddle a chance to redeem himself at the end is the central theme of this whole epic tale and something the movie completely misunderstood. What Harry does with the wand and the other Hallows is perfect as well. Again, the movie missed the point ENTIRELY. Neville becoming a leader is wonderful and right. Molly taking on Bellatrix? I cheered out loud. Dobby’s fate? Crushing but well-written and meaningful. The revelations surrounding Snape fit into place neatly. Love is the redeemer. Love and grief and remorse. This is something that Tolkien knew, too. It’s a Deep Wisdom and the fact that it appears in maybe the greatest YA series of all time is no mistake. show less

Not in the mood for a long review so short version. I wanted to hate it but its actually pretty solid. Takes a lot of inspiration from Tolkien, Dahl and Dickens but is its own thing. Can feel a little episodic at times and author isn't able to come up with enough reasons why the kids don't talk to an adult instead of doing things themselves. But overall its a fairly good and easy read. End of review, now on to the interesting part :) .

I was shocked when i realised what this is. The premise show more is actually an allegory reimagining white, old money privilege as magic. Its kind of amazing in a horrifying sort of way. Essentially the word muggle is this worlds version of the word pleb and the author uses it with gusto to abuse the non-privileged class even when there are characters from that class around like Hermione. I don't know if Rowling comes from money but it certainly seems like she wants to.
You'll notice there are never any references to what wizards do for a living or what use a Hogwarts education is, because the people who go to these sorts of schools don't actually need to work for a living.
The only reason given for why magic is covered up is that the commoners will all want handouts from the privileged class if they learn how privileged they are.
“Well, their main job is to keep it from the Muggles that there’s still witches an’ wizards up an’ down the country.”
“Why?”
“Why? Blimey, Harry, everyone’d be wantin’ magic solutions to their problems.
It doesn't help that this book is whiter than the private schools its imitating, and in this case that feels like a feature not a bug. Lets not even get into the goblin bankers, i'm surprised she didn't cut out the pretense entirely and call one of them Fagan.

Anyway i am now more interested in reading 'Atlas Shrugged' as i seriously want to compare the two :) .
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***spoiler alert. spoilers of a specific nature will be under cuts. you've been warned. spoiler alert.***

I went into this new Harry Potter play with no particular expectations except a niggling fear that it would feel wrong or tacked on and/or that it would in some way ruin Harry Potter. I was also a little skeptical of the format. Why a play rather than a novel (or novella) or a movie or some other form that we already know this world through? So when I sat down to read it yesterday morning show more I was delighted to look up around page thirty and say, somewhat wonderingly, "This is really good!"

This works as a play. I can't say that it would not work in some other format, but it feels like a play and I did not find the format disappointing or long for it to be presented otherwise. Rowling said something a while back about there being aspects of the story that meant it needed to be a play, and I can't quite put my finger on anything that makes me say, "Yep, that right there would not have worked any other way." But some of the elements do seem like they would be particularly suited to a stage performance with a live audience. The stage directions often indicate that the Dementors appear sort of in the audience, and I think that would be particularly effective. Voldemort's voice similarly sometimes seems like it is meant to come from behind or within the audience, and how creepy would that be? Also, the stage directions sometimes call for a fade to black, which you can do in a film (and not in a novel), but not in the same way you can in a theatre, where you can plunge the entire audience into complete darkness. I don't know that I would go so far as to say that the story requires these effects in a live performance, but I do think they probably enhance the story greatly.

I also think the emotional pitch of the story would lend itself particularly well to a stage performance. There's a lot of high emotion here that I think it would be easy to overdo in a film but which, done well, would be perfectly suited to the stage, where the actors and the audience can achieve a kind of rapport. Furthermore, while a talented writer should certainly be able to pull off this story in novel form, there's of course something to be said for understanding which medium will serve the story best. And I think this story would be best served by a visual medium. The plot revolves around the ways in which Harry and his younger son, Albus, fail to understand one another. Since neither of them fully understands why or how they do not understand the other, being able to watch them interact may be more effective and affecting than reading about it. Some of the scenes also struck me as the kind of thing that would work best visually. The moment when adult Harry must watch his mother die for him in the past while being held up by his wife and son is one such scene. I can so easily imagine this on stage, and in my imagination it is sublimely painful--one of those exquisite moments you sometimes experience watching a play where you feel for one moment that the actors have perfectly portrayed something real and every single person in the theatre is feeling the exact same thing in their own way in the exact same moment. And I can just as easily imagine it not working in a film. Too sharp, too produced, perhaps.

Of course, if you're reading the script, you're not experiencing all this in a visual medium, but somehow I think it still works better than it would have as a novel/la. The stage directions are there; one can "see" how it might be performed. For me, reading this script was a seamless, painless experience. I have some experience/training in reading plays, given my background, so this may be harder for readers who don't, but the script uses the stage directions very well to fill in what's happening for readers. In fact, I suspect the stage directions (at least in this version of the script that's been released for people to read, rather than to produce a play from) have been written specifically with readers who may never get to see the play in mind.

As for the story itself, I thought Delphi's motivation and background were a little bit "dropped in" (though the resulting climax where Harry had to take on the figure of Voldemort was wonderfully chilling) and the repeated time travel was perhaps a tiny bit silly, but the play uses it to great effect to explore both the Harry Potter world and a theme Rowling was interested in throughout the Harry Potter novels: acceptance of death. Albus goes back in time to try to save Cedric Diggory because Albus understands what it's like to be thought of as a "spare." But in saving Diggory, he destroys the future. Depending on what, exactly, he does in the past, the future is variably changed: sometimes Harry dies at the Battle of Hogwarts (thus meaning neither Albus nor Harry's other children are ever born (the story follows Albus's friends Scorpius in that future--gosh but I love Scorpius. He's such a marvelous combination of snarkiness and vulnerability, nerdiness and innocence); sometimes the great scheme of things is the same but Ron and Hermione never got married; sometimes Voldemort won and the world is a terrible, terrible place. The death of Cedric Diggory is perhaps one of the hardest in the Harry Potter novels to accept--he died for nothing, and simply because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time--but even this death we must accept. It does not do to try to meddle in such things. We see this theme again within the time travel when Harry must let Voldemort kill his parents; he cannot stop him, for then Voldemort would never have been weakened, might never have been defeated. The play stops shy of saying "everything happens for a reason." It's not that; it's not that there's a grand plan that we don't understand. It's that the way of the world is that time moves forward, that people die, that there are some things that we cannot change, and that we must learn to accept this. Even magic does not (can not, should not) change that.

This play is not for children. It's not that it's not appropriate for (older) children--I'd say any child who could handle the last three books could handle the play--but it is not designed for children. There is no childlike, delightful magic here. This is not a world in which everything will probably turn out okay. This play exists in an adult world, one where fathers may mess up their sons simply because they can't find a way to understand them, a world where husbands weep in their wives' arms because they've hurt their shared child. Some fans may find this disappointing, but I thought it was an excellent addition to the Harry Potter world. The novels are mostly told from Harry's perspective, his perspective, even in the end, as a child. The play is not. The play feels like seeing this world as it may always have been, were you to look at it through the eyes of an adult. The goggles are off, and the horrible things of this world seem a little more fully, really horrible here, though I had no sense of this ruining the world for me, or unpleasantly dispelling any kind of illusion. It's simply another way of looking at it (a child's view of the world is not more correct than an adult's--just different, just focused differently). And I found that refreshing, found it a lovely commentary on the Harry Potter world we already know.

Some of that commentary tweaks perplexities of the novels in satisfying ways. Dumbledore, for instance, through his headmaster's portrait at Hogwarts, admonishes Harry for coming to him for advice about Albus. It's a wonderful moment of dragging into the light just how terrible Dumbledore was as a father figure for Harry. And at one point Ron basically says, "I don't have much to contribute here, but if Harry and Hermione are doing an unpopular, dangerous thing, I'm going too." Which sells Ron a little short, but is still a lovely echo of the dynamic of the novels. We see more fully, more realistically, the ways the Dursleys' abuse of Harry must have harmed him psychologically as a child. And Draco. Ah, Draco. Turns out he's an actual human being, with feelings and complexities and hey! he's not pure evil. The last few books hint at that, of course, but again. This is an adult view; those were a children's view. It's nice to see him as a three- dimensional figure. (In fact, seeing Draco more fully realized was one of the highlights of the play for me.)

I've seen some complaints in reviews that the characters don't feel like themselves in the play. I agree by way of disagreeing heartily. By which I mean, no, this wasn't like reading an eighth Harry Potter novel where we pick up with the characters a month or two after we last saw them and everything is familiar and lovely. It's nineteen years later. They've grown up. They've become adult versions of themselves. They've become maybe a little less silly, maybe a little more serious, much more responsible, a bit more sad, a bit more distracted, a good deal more careworn. Their joys have become more complex; their sadnesses have grown thornier. They've become adults. I love, love, love the Harry Potter novels, I love them for the way they are magical themselves and delightful, and I do not for one second think there's anything wrong with giving children that view or with adults enjoying it too. But there's room for seeing these characters this way as well, and I do not fault the play for portraying them thus.

In fact, after just one read (I feel a reread coming on, possibly very soon), I only have two quibbles (aside from a slight dissatisfaction with some minor machinations of the plot): 1) Where are James and Lily (the youngers, that is, Harry's other children) while Harry and Ginny et al are trying to find missing Albus? I mean, presumably they're at Hogwarts, as school is in session, but there's never any mention of their parents telling them what's up, or reassuring them, or even asking them if they have any idea where Albus went. This might be a function of reading the script--and the rehearsal/possibly-not-final script at that--as one might see something in the background that explains what's up with the other kids when watching the play, but this really bothered me at one point. Like, hello? Harry? You're so worried about being a shitty dad to your one kid, maybe, like, check and make sure your other children aren't freaking out that their brother has disappeared? 2) For the first third of the book, I was one hundred percent sure that Albus and Scorpius were falling in love. Then we started getting hints that Albus isn't that way inclined but I was still one hundred percent sure Scorpius was falling for Albus. And then in the end it turns out both of them are all "Cool! Girls!" So. tired. of. people. erasing. their. own. homosexual. subtext. Look, I'll be the first to admit that I'm faster to see this kind of subtext than others, but husbeast, who is decidedly not, who, in fact, has been known to turn to me during a movie or TV show and say, "No, they aren't, stop it," looked up at about the one-third point and said, "They're in a romantic relationship, right?" So. Just. *makes the face I'm making*

This is the first time I've gotten to experience buying a Harry Potter book the day it came out, taking it home, and reading the whole thing. And it was glorious. I loved it. I loved getting to do it, and I loved the play itself. Recommended wholeheartedly. show less