Finding one's audience in certain genres is always tricky. Looking back now, post-Potter, it might be hard to imagine a world in which a publisher would sigh at seeing Book I of VII of what some poor, naive cafe barista has decided is a needed contribution to the decidedly unsalable and overcrowded world of children's fantasy.
Wait. My stack of postage-weary manuscripts is informing me we still live in that world.
Well, no matter, surely there is still a market for several-week-old reviews of a book everyone has already read, shelved, placed under the pillow and/or ripped to shreds upon finding out that their carefully wrought letters to J.K. Rowling and their dubious work on the seedier side of the fan fiction metaverse did not, in fact, end up with Harry presenting the love that dare not speak its name in the form of a "Potio Novem" to Snape. (No more spoilers, I swear.)
Now that I've made sure this review is only relevant to those with no interest in the book, let alone any sense of decency, let me throw the rest of you out, who are most likely looking for a quick and dirty mockery of a fad that has plagued your friends for the last 7-9 years, by saying that "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" is a required read for anyone who loves stories.
"Deathly Hallows" plays wonderfully with the formula the series has gradually perfected, beginning in media res with Rowling's cinematic eye following the ankle-flapping cloak of the increasingly complex character of Severus Snape. (Er, try to forget that fan fiction joke before you start the book.) The requisite listless summer opening is turned on end when the Dursleys make a sudden and strangely affecting farewell from Privet Drive. Rowling's almost postmodern love of playing with texts in all the signs and articles that appear throughout the series is bested in her introduction to the Deathly Hollows, a parable that shows a keen sense of the contradictory forces behind the telling and interpreting of stories.
Some may bemoan the more-or-less absence of Hogwarts, the series' central hook, in "Deathly Hallows." The quiet mundanity of schoolyard gossip and the instantly relatable struggle of survival in the education system aren't in their usual forms, but the charm and awkwardness of childhood is still present, and it is deepened in contrast with the slow-dawning realization of adult responsibility.
And yes, Rowling has an unfortunate distrust of her readers in punctuating every third line of dialogue with outright statement of each character's innermost thoughts and feelings; yes, there is twenty pages of back story near the beginning which is relayed almost entirely through Harry reading the newspaper; and, hell, yes, it's painfully obvious that Rowling wrote the trite and unnecessary epilogue long ago and her editors didn't have the courage to tell her she can do a lot better now, though her use of language throughout still won't win any converts among those most interested in the ability to turn a phrase.
But the inevitability of the epilogue also exemplifies the irresistible strength of the series: the meticulous craft behind the world, plot and characters. Each of these elements supports each other so well that loyal and attentive readers, even if they predict some of the details, will marvel at how the tiny pieces of the puzzle shape the story, in a way that never seems convoluted or convenient. That most universal conflict, a struggle of will and destiny, comes to a head near the end in a death that is not tragic simply because of the body count (which is high but never gratuitous), but because of the reader's sudden certainty of the character's past and present. Rowling has grasped the epiphany in a manner that writers in and outside her genre should envy.
Ultimately, Harry Potter has succeeded, and deservedly so, because the unfamiliar and fantastic is grounded in the ordinary and the human, and it is J.K. Rowling's special power to make strange both magic and Muggle that transforms this simple bildungsroman.
It sounds like an easy recipe, but try telling that to the poor copy editor who gets handed the highly anticipated third sequel to "Barry Goodwhite and the Watery Porridge." Turning the last page, he will not be left grinning for hours on end, as this sometimes-jaded critic was at the end of "Harry Potter."
4 stars out of 5
