The much hyped and awaited last installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, arrived in our home last Thursday. A good read.
Was it fabulous? No.
Will I remember this series with great fondness? No.
Is this one of those literary accomplishments that will twine through my memories and my sensibilities in years to come? No.
Which brings me to the conclusion I am mildly disappointed by the series. Oh sure, yes, it started as a children’s story. It did get a whole generation of children reading. All of that is laudable. But do I understand the mania behind this? Not really, although I must admit I’ve been a small and not as passionate part of that mania.
So I start asking myself, why the disappointment? I think much of it has to do with the craft of writing, things I suppose the average person wouldn’t much care about. These are essentially fast food books. (Of course, I’m one to cast disparaging remarks! JK Rowling is the woman who is richer than the Queen of England, while my best year as a writer garnered about $10,000CDN.)But I digress.
I kept expecting Harry to ‘come of age’, to stop whining about all the things he’d lost and finally stop bumbling around and use his intellect. Rowling had him led by the nose through this final installment. Almost every break he had was at someone else’s hands. He did practically no digging on his own, demonstrated very little initiative other than a fascination with the dark horrors of Voldemort’s mind. I couldn’t help but feel that Rowling herself sort of bumbled around through the stories, working without a well-thought out and crafted plot outline. Very little consideration was given to character motivation and development. Some, but very little. It read to me as: he did this, and then he did that, and then they went here, and then they went there. With very few exceptions, it is Hermoine who makes the decisions about where they will go when they’re ‘on the lamb’, so to speak. And any of Harry’s reasons are purely indulgent and selfish, without any sense of sacrificing what he wants for ‘the greater good’, which is a line oft used without effect in the novel.
Frankly, the most complex and interesting character by far is Snape, who gets only cursory treatment in this story and only in summation, a far more interesting villain than Voldemort, who is so pat and cardboard. Yawn. No fear generated there. Same old thing. I am all powerful. I kill, kill, torture, torture. Next.
Rowling had all the elements there at her disposal, but refused to take up the challenge. Even Darth Vader was more fascinating than Voldemort. Predictable, predictable.
As was Harry, really. I read a CBC review in which the critic waxed poetic (rare for this particular critic) and confessed to weeping through the last 100 pages. Really?
There was only one scene that brought me to tears, and before you start thinking I’m not the sort to cry, stand corrected. I’m the one who cries over sappy commercials, tender moments. Heck, on a hormonal day I’ve been known to cry over beautiful ripe tomatoes. So Rowling failed to move this sentimentalist.
And in the end I didn’t have that sense of fulfillment and longing I’ve had with other memorable novels: The Lord of the Rings, Jude the Obscure, Lavondyss, Tigana. Will I go back and re-read these stories? Yes. But not often, I don’t think. Not the way I’ve read and re-read so much of Charles de Lint, Guy Gavriel Kay, C.J. Cherryh, Tolkien, Steinbeck, Richard Adams, Holdstock, Pauline Gedge, Orson Scott Card, Thomas Hardy, to name a few.
So, yeah, pleasant summer read. But not memorable.