Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows full review.

So I’ll do my best to review this one without spoilers, although if you still intend to read the book, you may want to stop here to be safe.

Even after a good night’s sleep, I still think this book was the best of the series. When I evaluate a book, I focus on three things: plot, prose, and characters. I’ve always thought Rowling excelled at prose – more on that in a moment – which propelled the first two books through some fairly simple plots and characters that were a little one-dimensional. Whether it was part of a plan or just Rowling’s growth as a writer, her plots became significantly more involved, with multiple subplots and a number of additional characters getting more screen time. And her characters really started to develop in the third and fourth books, with most of the central characters becoming three-dimensional by books five and six. Deathly Hallows didn’t disappoint in any of these three criteria, although I did find it odd that the character who develops the most is one who’s already dead when the book opens.

Rowling’s prose has come under a little criticism recently, although it’s possible that this has been going on all along and I just missed it. (To see what I mean, Google “Rowling clunky prose” and see how many hits come up – it’s almost as if one writer used that phrase a few years ago and every blogger on the Internet has picked it up.) The CNN.com review said “Rowling has attracted much criticism for her often clunky prose;” I couldn’t disagree more: Rowling’s prose is straightforward and descriptive, evoking images in a way that no other writer I’ve encountered is able to do. When I read a well-written book, I “see” the action in the book, almost like a movie playing in my mind as I read. The clearer the movie, the better the prose must be, and I have never run into an author who produces such incredibly well-defined images with her prose. That doesn’t necessarily mean she spends the most time on describing the scenery – I’m pretty sure Charles Dickens has that title sewn up – but that she strikes a perfect balance between descriptive text and active text. I understand that J.R.R. Tolkien’s works are more literary, but for readability, Rowling destroys Tolkien, who hails from the Dickensian tradition of giving us too fine a level of detail. Clunky prose gets in the way, slowing you down, throwing you off of the story, whereas good prose lets the story stand for itself. A good story is like fresh fish or a high-quality steak: You don’t foul that kind of food up with a heavy sauce or with overrich side dishes or with less-than-fresh ingredients, so why foul a good story up with prose that gets in the way? You want clunky prose, go read James Joyce or Henry James – if you can stomach it. I’ll stick with Rowling’s because it gets the job done.

I don’t want to talk too much about the plot for fear of introducing spoilers, but I’ll speak a little in generalities. In the context of the entire series, I don’t think Rowling could have done much better. The resolutions for the main characters worked for me, although I echo one commenter’s post on the prior thread about the epilogue being a bit too sparse; the deaths Rowling promised/threatened were reasonable, and clearly a few of the “good guys” had to die for the plot to have any semblance of believability, even within the fictional world.

The action sequences were some of Rowling’s best, with none of the muddled details and running about that made book five my least favorite in the series (due to the entire sequence at the Ministry of Magic towards the book’s end). What really worked for me in book seven, however, was the way Rowling uses a couple of major anecdotes and a few recurring characters to give both the global view of what’s going on in the wizarding world and the local view of what’s going on with Harry in the search for the Horcruxes.

She also works heavily with a few major themes – including the related themes of disillusionment and of faith – making this probably the deepest of the seven novels. Harry learns some unsettling details about Dumbledore’s past while he’s struggling to formulate a plan for locating the missing Horcruxes, leading him to wonder about the wisdom of continuing to carry out the mission Dumbledore assigned to him before his death. Harry’s relations with Ron and Hermione and the relationship between those two vacillate for much of the work as the quest goes less than smoothly and the three spend an inordinate amount of time together in uncomfortable conditions. I’ll be honest – I’m not reading these books for their deeper meaning, and while I thought I sensed some allegory about faith and trust, I was too busy enjoying the story to worry about any of that.

The seventh book’s character development is middle-of-the-pack for the series, in part because the three major characters were already pretty well developed by the end of the sixth book. Ron does end up maturing during the seventh book, but the point where he loses faith in Harry wasn’t much of a surprise and I felt like I’d seen it in an earlier book. Harry himself shows some growth towards the end of the seventh book, although this was a necessary element for the plot to reach its denouement. The character who develops the most is Albus Dumbledore, who dies at the end of book six, but whose character and background were never fleshed out previous to this book, with him serving as more of a benefactor and protector than as a full-fledged character. What you see in the back half of book six is a taste of what Rowling offers on Dumbledore in book seven. We also get some more insight into Snape’s character, but like that of Dumbledore, it’s by flashback, rather than by the characters developing as a result of the action and dialogue in the book’s present. The fact that the Big Three don’t develop much, and that the necessary direction of the plot means we don’t get to see as much of the better secondary characters (the various Weasleys, Luna, and Neville), made the lack of character development and the very heavy focus on Harry and Hermione the one big disappointment for me, although I’m obviously very invested in those characters and still ended up completely engrossed in their actions.

As I mentioned at the top, if a book has good plot, clean prose, and compelling characters, I’m in. I’ve been hooked on Harry since book one and if anything, I’m disappointed that the series is over, and the characters I know so well have seen their stories come to a close. (I did spend today in my typical post-Potter melancholy, which always hits me after I finish one of the books for the first time.) But before I let the subject drop, let me throw one story at you about what that first Harry Potter did for me.

I’ve seen a lot of criticism of Rowling’s work from people (including Harold Bloom and A.S. Byatt) who say that because the Potter novels aren’t real literature, they’re not going to lead people to read the classics or to otherwise up the quality of their reading materials. I can only speak to my own experience, but for me, that is absolute bollocks. I was a bookworm when I was younger, but my tastes were typical teenaged-boy – science fiction with a strong dose of countercultural books like Catch-22, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and any number of books by Vonnegut. The “great books” forced on me in high school bored me to tears, and as soon as I got free of those requirements, I stopped reading them altogether (which isn’t to say I read everything that was assigned to me, either). When I got into my 20s, I more or less stopped reading fiction for pleasure, period, reading nonfiction when I wanted a book for a long flight.

In the fall of 2000, my wife picked up the first two Harry Potter books, tore through the first one, and gave me the old, “You have to read this!” line. So I took it on a business trip to California and started it on the plane ride home – and I was hooked. In 2001, I read the next two books, but also found myself getting back into the reading habit; I discovered P.G. Wodehouse and started perusing used book stores for the first time in a few years. I read Goblet of Fire in January of 2002, and ended up reading 75 books that year, including Moby Dick, Silas Marner, and The Sound and the Fury. Since I read that first Harry Potter book, I’ve read over 300 books, hitting Tolstoy, James, Dostoevsky, two Brontës, Fielding, Hemingway, more Faulkner, Stendhal, Hardy, Nabokov, Morrison, Eliot, Foster, Defoe, Proust, Flaubert, and the entire catalogs of Jane Austen and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The universal statement that the Harry Potter novels will not lead anyone to read the classics is wrong. J.K. Rowling reminded me that I love to read, and I will forever be grateful to her for that.

Indeed, I think that the criticism of Rowling’s work is a bit of literary snobbery, a reflection of the dismay that the exclusivity once offered to those who put the time into reading “great books” is losing currency in a world where great storytelling trumps metaphor and symbolism and all of the other things that our English professors told us were important without ever telling us why. Reading the classics has become its own reward, rather than a prerequisite for graduating from Eton before moving on to Oxford and then a job in the City, and our definition of “classics” is likely to change as well, with verbose authors like Richardson and Trollope sliding from view while new voices emerge from outside the Western canon. I won’t deny that there is tripe to be found in the fiction section of every bookstore in the United States, but lumping Rowling’s output with that tripe is unfair to her and to those of us who have loved her work to the point that it kindled – or rekindled – a love affair with the novel.

UPDATE: JC Bradbury weighs in on the Potter book – and its possible effect on baseball attendance over the weekend – on the Sabernomics blog.

Comments

  1. Agree regarding the epilogue, a bit sparse. It almost made me wonder what was the point. I also felt the ending of the last chapter was a bit rushed as well. I would have a appreciated a bit more ceremony and remembrance for the lost ones. As for the Epilogue, they are normally a bonus for fans, to give them closure, and often they can be quite sappy. If you do decide to have an epilogue, you’ve essentially decided you are going to give fans the sappy ending. So why not go all out and give us a fuller ending than that? But, you can’t have everything. The last couple of hundred pages were incredibly taut.

    On a separate note, Mr. Law. In one of your chats I read you mention that you did not think much of American fiction of the last ten years (I could be completely misquoting you on this). I don’t agree or disagree (I mostly read non-fiction), but I hadn’t read you mention either of two of the best fiction books I’ve read in the last ten years, which I would heartily recommend: Chabon’s “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” and Marilynne Robinson’s “Gilead”.

  2. I just finished the book last night, and I find myself surprisingly underwhelmed (and for anyone reading, there will likely be spoilers below). I’ve been a huge fan of the series, and a few things sort of occurred to me while reading this book:

    (1) I don’t like Ron. I want to like him, but he’s constantly childish and petty, and until a few brief moments here in Hallows he provided little more to the story than comic relief. His main contribution is his family, which is full of more interesting characters. Had he undergone the same progression as say, Neville, he would have worked better for me.

    (2) I’m not a big fan of “Horcruxes.” It’s a clumsy, awkward word, both to read and to say. I think Rowling’s writing is excellent, but the Horcrux/Hallows plot over the final two books was convoluted and I didn’t find the resolution particularly rewarding. So Dumbledore was seeking the Hallows when he should’ve been seeking the Horcurxes? And he didn’t mention the Hallows to Harry because he didn’t want him to do the same? But it turns out that the Hallows were the right way all along? Bleh. I found myself skimming over the exposition about this stuff, something I’ve never done in a Harry Potter book before.

    (3) I thought the ending was lousy. I found the penultimate chapter to be sort of a cheap, comic book-y cheat. I’m not suggesting I wish the end result was different, but all of the drama of Harry’s “death” is gone on the next page, when we find out he’s not dead. Then, after yet another interminable explanation of the link between Voldemort and Harry, for some inexplicable reason Narcissa Malfoy aids his deceit, and the ensuing reactions to his death are about as moving as the funeral scene in Tom Sawyer. I understand the desire to end the series on an upbeat note, after a relentlessly dreary final three novels, but this was far too quick and convenient a resolution for me.

    (4) The 7th book is almost entirely free of the invention and whimsy of rest of the series. The only new addition that I can think of was Hermione’s TARDIS-like bag. Half the book was spent in a tent!

    I feel a little guilty being so negative about Hallows, but it was the only book in the series that failed to really stir my interest. I read all of the others in two days or less. I actually stopped reading this one two nights ago with 70 pages to go, and I wasn’t even tired. I think that’s when I knew that it wasn’t working for me, and there wasn’t enough space left to make it right. And am I the only one who thinks Harry not ending up with Hermione was a huge miscalculation?

    Thanks for a good review, Keith. I feel the same way about the series as a whole–this installment just left me a little cold.

  3. Did you hear that JK has anounced that she is almost certainly going to publish an encyclopedia of all things Potter including explanded backstories for many of the lesser characters? She apparently has tens if not hundreds of notebooks full of character backstories. I am pumped about this. Imagine learning the life stories of Slughorn, Olivander, McGonagle, etc.? It will be sweet.

  4. Chris, I think your opinion is interesting although I disagree with most of what you said. Still, one thing that I strongly disagree with is your suggestion that Harry and Hermione should have been together. This is just wrong, wrong, wrong, in my opinion. If you can’t see that Ginny is the perfect girl for Harry I think you may not really get his character (and I don’t mean that to come off as obnoxious as it probably sounds).

    She is everything he needs understanding, not overly wowed by his celebrity, emotional without being outwardly so or over the top about it, strong-willed, almost tomboyish (see her Quidditch playing) without being masculine, etc. Her demeanor is just perfect for him.

  5. Jesse G.: I think you’re probably right about Ginny’s personality being a better fit for Harry. I think the problem for me is that she played such a small role in the final chapter, and the whole I-can’t-be-with-you-because-it’s-too-dangerous thing was cribbed directly from Spider-Man.

  6. Agree with some of the points here – Ginny’s lack of involvement in most of the significant bits was a bit of a bummer considering she is the one who ends up with Harry, although I did enjoy Mom Weasley getting fired up to whack Bellatrix.

    And yeah, the whole Ron being moody thing got old for me as well. I liked him in the 1st 2 or 3 books, but it seemed like the same thing with him in the subsequent ones – jealous of Harry for one reason or another, and then comes to his senses.

  7. Chris, I agree that I wish she had played a bigger role, especially in the final scenes at Hogwarts. As far as the whole cribbing from Spiderman thing, I think that it is easy to forget that art becomes popular and has resonance with people precisely because of the universality of the themes involved. In other words, when I hear people complaining about Harry Potter being a rip off of Star Wars or LotR or some other epic it rubs me the wrong way because cliches are cliches for a reason, they have a large grain of truth in them. We are drawn to things precisely because the emotions and themes in them are identifiable to us in some way.

  8. I tend to agree with Javier on the epilogue, yeah I wish there was more detail, but Rowling mentions in the interview below that she cut it down on purpose – which made sense. I disagree completely on Ron (with Chris) – I think more than anything, Ron suffers from being a basically insecure kid – and slowly but surely, he’s getting past it, be it with Hermoine, Harry, or what not. He’s never the guy – he’s always the guy on the side, and that’s got to grate on anyone (let alone a teenager)

    Re: Snape. My only regret is we don’t see more of Sevrus – his story, IMO, may be the most fascinating one in the books, but this is Harry’s tale. JKR’s best “character” IMO.

    Overall, to me, the HP books are basically what Keith described – they’re just fun to read, the kind of stuff that got me into reading in the first place. I certainly don’t read as much as I used to 5-10 years ago (I’m 24), but the series did a good job of reminding why I enjoy reading so much.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19959323/ – some more detail on what everyone is up to

  9. By far the best book of the 7 and thats saying something since it is the best series every written.

  10. I agree with Ace about Snape. He was the most interesting character in the series. The chapter on the background of what Snape went through not being loved by anyone never getting close to anyone his whole life besides Lilly Potter was my favorite chapter by far. I wish they had one last meeting between Harry and Snape.

    The book itself wasn’t my favorite, but I couldn’t put it down just like the other books in the series. The only part of the book I didn’t like is it seemed JK wanted to kill Harry but couldn’t bring herself to do it and had him come back from the dead.

  11. Hi; no Harry Potter comment here but I took a quick read through the site and wanted to 1) thank you for saying that Ted Drewes in St. Louis is not as great as it is made out to be, and 2) ask 2 things: First, any suggestions for lunch in Providence? Second, saw that you liked Hell’s Kitchen in Minneapolis–any plans to return?
    Thanks

  12. EJT: The next excuse I have to go to Minneapolis, I’ll be there. I’ve got an email out to a friend to ask for the name of a place we went to in Providence – that’s the only restaurant I’ve hit down there.

    I’m firmly in the more-Snape-backstory camp. I liked what she gave, but it was a little superficial, almost too easy an explanation for his personality. Although I’m curious how or why Harry thought to do what he did with Snape in that scene – did he suspect all along what Snape was up to? I don’t think we had any foreshadowing of that.

  13. I think that Ginny was a much better fit for Harry than was Hermione. Rowling has been building up Ron and Hermione since Azkaban and it was the best and only way to go.

    I did, however, think that Ginny was going to kick the bucket since she was left behind in the room of requirement. I wouldn’t have minded seeing Ginny get whacked either. But, based on the glorious way that JK finished this amazing and absolutely unique series, I am inclined to say that she made the right decision.

    On a side note, did any of you get the slightest reminder of “The One Ring” when Rowling describes the Elder Wand. “It has been lost over the years, but it always resurfaces” yada yada yada. I am not saying the Elder Wand was a bad idea, because I thought the Hallows/Horcruxes plot was fantastic, but that description reaked or Tolkien’s ring. Just a side thought.

    The Epilogue wasn’t very fulfilling and I think that Rowling might have created it for the simple sake of further preventing anyone from ever trying to create any side plots, what happened after Voldemort died, etc. It doesn’t necessarily bring closure, it just voids 19 years of copy-cat availability which is a good move overall.

    Having said all this, I wouldn’t mind a prequel story that leads up to the death of Lily and James.

  14. Ace,

    Yeah, I just saw her explanation on the epilogue, and i guess I can live with that, particularly since a lot of the things she would have put in it will probably end up in the encylopedia she is planning on putting together.

    But I guess I really also felt the last chapter, and I mean the very ending of it, was also sparse. One of the twins had died, Lupin and Tonks and 50+ other fighters. The war was over and had been won. I think a cathartic celebratory/memorial-like moment would have been fitting, so those of us who had an investment in Lupin and the others could just take a second to see the others mourn for them. I mean, we even got a toast for Moody, and a very poignant service for Dobby, and we don’t get that at the end for people who were arguably more significant characters. But its really a minor complaint, I guess. I still thought it was a GREAT ending to the series.

  15. who is victorie…the girl that was mentioned in the epilogue?

  16. Hey Keith, have you read Robert Jordan? You talk about Tolkien just being too Dickensian to be enjoyable to read, and I totally agree. The LOTR movies are the only ones I can think of that I liked significantly more than the books, and even they had their painful moments! But as much as I love HP (and I do–I was up four hours past my friends on a camping excursion trying to finish number 7), I think JKR falls a little too far to the opposite side of Tolkien. It’s not that I find her prose, or anything about the series, “clunky.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Everything is a little too simple, which is understandable since she’s only been a writer for as long as she’s been writing HP and they were originally supposed to be children’s stories anyway. Jordan, I think, finds the perfect balance between Tolkien and Rowling, especially in the first six books of his Wheel of Time Series. He gets too descriptive at points (WAY too descriptive sometimes later on), but his stories, characters, and world are much fuller and more adult than Rowling’s while still being far more readable in his worst moments than Tolkien. Sometimes he gets a little lost in just how enormous and detailed the world is he’s created (I believe he’s well over 7,000 pages for the series so far and not done), but you’ll forgive him for it.

    Anyway, I liked HP 7 a lot–it was certainly, at the very least, totally engrossing, which is enough for any book. The scene of Harry burying Dobby was especially well-done and maybe the most powerful thing she’s written.

    There were a number of things, however, that really bothered me. First of all, I was very worried at first when Harry didn’t actually die–I thought it was awful, and that it was simply because JKR didn’t have the courage to kill him off. However, on second thought, I think she did it the way she had always planned (and it was nice to see Dumbledore as a truly full character) though I still think Harry should have died. She handled it well enough though that it is a minor complaint. Also, I realized in this book, even before he predictably walked out on Harry just when he knew he couldn’t afford to, that I just don’t like Ron at all as a character. Sure, he’s a good guy who’s very insecure, but the fact is that people like him simply don’t have what it takes to be a part of a mission as important as the one the three of them were on. It seems like JKR has to search for ways for him to be helpful (the chess game in the first book comes to mind), and it ends up feeling contrived. Finally, I thought the epilogue was mediocre at best, and the last lines of the series (something like “His scar hadn’t hurt in 19 years. All was well.”) were simply atrocious. As a whole the epilogue was, I think, probably the worst thing she’s written since The Chamber of Secrets, and really seemed more like a cheap children’s book than an excellent novel. All of that doesn’t take that much away from my second favorite series of all time (after WOT) and a wonderful book, it just left me with a little bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. Eh, c’est la vie. And read Jordan.

    PS So you’re walking to what you think is your imminent death in an invisibility cloak, you’ve just revealed yourself to a good, but not extremely close friend of yours in Neville, you pass the love of your life in the hallway helping someone, and you don’t stop, kiss her and say your final goodbyes! I know Harry has this irrational noble streak that makes him think that it will be easier for his friends if he avoids them and doesn’t let them know why, but doesn’t he see how hard it will be for Ron, Hermione and Ginny if he doesn’t explain to anyone why he’s going to let himelf be killed(they have no other way of knowing)? And I really believe Ginny would’ve been big enough to understand and let him go, just like she was when he brok up with her. That’s just the way she is–much more likable than her older brother. Anyway, that annoyed me, not because I thought that it was poor writing, but because that’s exactly what Harry probably would have done. Crazy!

  17. Matthew:

    I think we are supposed to assume that Victoire is the daughter of Bill Weasley and Fleur. Apparently, she is 17 (on the train to Hogwarts) but making out with Teddy Lupin (now 19). Victoire is a French name (hence the Fleur connection). Since she’s about to go to Hogwarts, she would not have been before during the book proper, but only appears in the Epilogue.

  18. Oh yeah, Chris’ comment reminded me. I think there’s a bunch of stuff in here that’s just plain lazy. It just happened to be Umbridge who stole the locket for no particular reason except that she liked it? Harry was lucky enough to say something about death so the enchantments set for Snape at Grimmauld Place didn’t hurt them? By disarming Malfoy Harry conviniently becomes master of the Elder Wand? Narcissa Malfoy (no longer trusted by Voldemort) is the one the check on Harry breathing, decides to help him AND all the death eater accept it? Harry is able to remain so still that no one notices he’s alive–even if the cruciatus curse doesn’t work (very convenient in itself I think–it’s not like Lily’s sacrifice protected her)it’s still throwing him about?

    Okay, I know I’m sounding petulant now. I really did like the book, but I liked it the way I liked the second two Matrix movies: I really enjoyed them, especially after I stopped comparing them to my expectations, but because the earlier work was so good, I wanted them to be almost perfect, and they simply weren’t.

  19. Lots to respond to … let me hit a few now.

    1. Harry and Hermione: Doesn’t work for me. Bad mix of personality types.

    2. I shared some of Sam’s thoughts about some convenient plot points, although the use of the deus ex machina was pretty frequent without the series, so it didn’t bother me that much. I will say that even if it wasn’t Umbridge, Kreacher would have described the wizard who took the locket, and the plot would have just unfurled in another direction. Using Umbridge gave Rowling a chance to bring in a familiar character and do fold it into that scene in the MoM. I also don’t think Voldemort was at the point where he didn’t trust Narcissa, and given her history, I don’t see any reason he would have anticipated that she would have helped Harry. That one didn’t bother me, and in fact it gave the Malfoys their one glimpse of redemption, even if it was motivated by self-interest (she helped him to save her family).

    3. I wouldn’t have minded another 50 pages of the book if we’d seen more of the immediate aftermath of the climactic events. If death is a major theme, shouldn’t grief and its healing be addressed? That was probably my #1 complaint about the book overall, but I didn’t want to put the accompanying spoilers in the main review.

  20. I don’t think Trollope was ever canonical, per se, he’s just a well-liked and not especially deep Victorian writer. Richardson, on the other hand, isn’t slipping from view, he’s probably more talked about in academic circles than ever. I don’t particularly care for him but he’ll always be discussed because he’s one of the most important early novelists and his stuff feeds very well into the things critics write about today, i.e. sexuality, class, etc. Now… as for Rowling, I’ve never actually read her books and I don’t doubt that her writing’s very vivid, but from the excerpts I’ve seen, her prose is also very clunky and really quite awful as far as I’m concerned. Take this paragraph for example:

    Then, three years ago, on a night very like tonight, the Prime Minister had been alone in his office when the portrait had once again announced the imminent arrival of Fudge, who had burst out of the fireplace, sopping wet and in a state of considerable panic. Before the Prime Minister could ask why he was dripping all over the Axminster, Fudge had started ranting about a prison the Prime Minister had never heard of, a man named “Serious” Black, something that sounded like “Hogwarts,” and a boy called Harry Potter, none of which made the remotest sense to the Prime Minister.

    Subordinate clause on top of subordinate clause, all sorts of unnecessary adjectives (imminent arrival, considerable panic, remotest sense), and all these references to the Prime Minister in the same sentence – hasn’t she ever heard of pronouns? The whole thing sounds like some really awful screenwriting in a children’s movie. And then you say that if we want clunky prose, go read James? James’s prose is beautiful; he’s very difficult and verbose, no doubt, but the length is really usually due to the complexity of the idea he’s expressing, or the detail of the scene, not because he uses too many words when fewer would do. Rowling on the other hand piles on extra words that don’t really help to describe anything. If the most that you’re willing to tell us about “Fudge’s” panic is that it was ‘considerable,’ why mention the considerable at all? Considerable as opposed to what, a mild panic? That tells us nothing, adds yet another word to what was already an ungainly sentence, and we already get that it’s considerable from that he’s “ranting.” But moreover, it’s not vivid at all, we have no idea of what this panicking Fudge looks like. Does he flap about his arms, does he pull at his hair (if he has any), chew on his nails – what? It’s just vague. Now take James, on the other hand, from the beginning of his last novel, The Ivory Tower, where even his most friendly critics would tell you James hemmed and hawed far too much.

    It was but a question of leaving their own contracted ‘grounds’, of crossing the Avenue and proceeding then to Mr Betterman’s gate, which even with the deliberate step of a truly massive young person she could reach in three or four minutes. So, making no other preparation than to open a vast pale-green parasol, a portable pavilion from which there fluttered fringes, frills and ribbons that made it resemble the roof of some Burmese palanquin or perhaps even pagoda, she took her way while these accessories fluttered in the August air, the morning freshness, and the soft sea-light. Her other draperies, white and voluminous, yielded to the mild breeze in the manner of those of a ship held back from speed yet with its canvas expanded; they conformed to their usual law of suggestion that the large loose ponderous girl, mistress as she might have been of the most expensive modern aids to the constitution of a ‘figure’, lived, as they said about her, in wrappers and tea-gowns; so that, save for her enjoying obviously the rudest health, she might have been a convalescent creeping forth from the consciousness of stale bedclothes. She turned in at the short drive, making the firm neat gravel creak under her tread, and at the end of fifty yards paused before the florid villa, a structure smothered in senseless architectural ornament, as if to put her question to its big fair foolish face.

    Look how deftly he conveys that the woman’s wealthy and fat without coming out and saying so, how very much we learn about her dress, the time, the place, the ugliness of Betterman’s house, and all without resorting to declaratory descriptive statements that wouldn’t advance the action (like “it was august,” “the girl was fat,” “his house was tacky”) as Rowling surely would’ve done. We really see this woman, and yet the prose is also perfectly economical.

  21. Keith: loved the review, and agree completely. Rowling is currently revealing some extra details on her NBC interview with Meredith Veiera (whose spelling I have just butchered, I think) including that Arthur Weasley was to have died in Book 5! I think we will get more of these details with time, like in a few years when the HPE comes out, but 1000 pages is a bit long for the book. Remember how much of an anticlimax the last 100 or so pages of LOTR is? The movies drop nearly all of it. Rowling remembered something very important: when you get to the end of your story, stop.

  22. I think Rowling had to be very careful with killing off Potter. If he had died to save everyone else he would have been a Christ-like figure.
    I really enjoyed Harry’s Horcrux vs. Hollows debate. Some of it was a bit convoluted, but what it said about Harry’s character as compared to Voldemort’s was brilliant.
    For those who keep bashing Ron, we couldn’t have had a whole book full of hereos there had to be a few fallible people. Hermoine’s refusal to believe in the Hallows was just as bad of a flaw as Ron’s.

  23. Re: Harry/Hermoine. With Keith here. I thought Hermoine/Ron was clear from basically Prisoner of Azkaban. I’ll admit to rooting for it as well – the characters both keep each others’ tendencies in check, and its good (purely from a selfish, enjoyable perspective) to see Ron get what he wants for once, instead of losing out to someone else. I thought the destruction of the locket made clear what everyone else knew – Ron was afraid of losing out, once again (how does the cliche go: always the bridesmaid, never the bride). Harry/Hermoine was always too pragmatic a relationship to ever imagine anything there.

  24. First off, I’d just like to reiterate that if you still think Harry and Hermione should be together then you need to take a look at book four or five. In both books (as well as prominently in six), JKR makes their brother/sister relationship blatant.

    Secondly, I was very grateful that Ron ran away at one point. I felt that it was a growing period for Ron that he needed, and it also strengthened his relationship between the other two, as he always felt like the “average” one, which JKR exemplified with he destroyed the horcrux.

    Personally, I love J.K’s writing style in a sense that the books are enjoyable. She does not make it difficult to read, but if it were really necessary I’m sure I could go deeper into the plot and find the themes of each book and subthemes. I am not a huge fan of Tolkein for the simple fact that once I hit the middle of the second book (after only being able to read paragraphs at a time because of the large amount of descriptive [and pointless] scenery), I just couldn’t even bother with it anymore. However, JKR always compels me to read more.

    I think that the ending for the Harry Potter series may have been trite or cliche, but I don’t think she could have ended the series any other way. After all, it was meant to be written as a chlidren’s book. The epilogue may have been cheesy but I feel if she had not put that as an ending there would be much more clamoring for more books.

    All in all, I enjoyed the books and growing up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione (seeing as now I am 17 and when I began reading, I was age 11). They are just books, after all.

  25. Ace has officially made me want a Severus Snape spin off…in the same vain that The Three Little Pigs is written from the Wolf’s perspective in various books.

    Obviously it wouldn’t be practical (or interesting for that matter) to follow him through out all 7 books, but I would love read his perspective in The Deathly Hallows.

    Even if it only provided the happenings of the wizarding world (and specifically Hogwarts) while Harry, Ron, and Hermione were trapped in a tent with no information.

    As far as the epilogue is concerned, I agree. It wasn’t good. I want to know about the other characters more than I want to know that Harry and Ginny and Ron and Hermione had children who also went to Hogwarts.

    And if you are only going to really focus on those four characters, at least FOCUS on those four characters. Is Harry an auror? How is Ron’s family dealing with its losses? Did Hermione continue S.P.E.W? Retrieve her parents from Australia?

    I also agree that there should have been SOMETHING after the big battle to commemorate the fallen. Maybe not an entire chapter, but at least a page or three to recognize that Fred, Lupin, and Tonks were all killed.

    Of course, it is entirely possible that I am just bitter about Fred’s death (yes, he and George were my favorite characters without question).

  26. Read the first HP book for a Scottish writer’s class I took in college. While I can understand why this series is so successful, I wasn’t all that impressed with JKR’s writing. Yes she does succeed in her characterizations and does succeed in getting the reader to invest in the characters (I was able to polish it off in a day or two), her endgame left me a bit underwhelmed. This is probably the biggest reason I never jumped on the bandwagon back then.

    Anyway, my main point here. Why do HP fans need to tear down Tolkien and his LOTR work to lend credibility to HP? Was it really necessary to criticize Tolkien, Joyce, and James. Granted, it was more of a back-handed compliment than a criticism, but still, why the negativity? I should hope from the success of this series that the broad range of people who are devoted HP readers should be a tribute to its quality and standard of writing.

    What I also believe is lost on those who compare the writing styles of JKR and Tolkien (and to a lesser extend Joyce and James) is the time period in which they were written. It is hard to argue that contemporary society is a more lax and, as a result, more accepting of literature written in the vernacular. This isn’t to say JKR is not a good writer or that HP is not to be considered a “great work”, the point here is that these books were not written in a vacuum. It is important to consider the time period and influences of the authors, in addition to their motivations and what they hoped to accomplish through writing their respective books.

    Basically, JKR has provided her fans with plenty of proof that they can rely on to extol HP’s virtues as a work of literature. The next time someone criticizes JKR, it would certainly prove to be the stronger argument if one relies on the source material rather than belittling the prose of other authors in order to hold up JKR.

  27. Keith: I don’t see that I tore down Tolkien/LotR, but that I was pointing out that the examples we’re often handed of excellent prose really aren’t. That was my entire point. I don’t see the time period as a good excuse for the confusing and aggravating prose of Joyce and James; they had plenty of contemporaries, like Ford Madox Ford, Baroness Orczy, G.K. Chesterton, and (stretching timeframes a bit) Thomas Hardy, who presented clear and often quite beautiful prose. The author’s desire to “accomplish” something is, to me, subordinate to the effectiveness of the method of delivery. If I can’t follow it, or if I find it too slow or aggravating, then the goals are rendered irrelevant because they’re unattainable.

  28. Hey Keith…love your work! ok so the creature thats quietly crying inside his brain or his soul when hes talking to Dumbledore – is that the part of his soul that is Voldermore? just wanted to make sure

  29. Point taken. Perhaps “tear down” was a bit strong on my part. While I understand the reasons why you brought Tolkien into the discussion, do you really believe Rowling destroys him on readability? I remember reading the Hobbit when I was quite young and didn’t really have much trouble devouring it.

    As for Joyce and James, again, point taken on time period, however, I am assuming your impressions of Joyce are predominantly based on Ulysses, which was very much experimental. The Dubliners is fairly straightforward. With Portrait of the Artist you get a sense it is Joyce beginning to play with the style he will use in Ulysses, but is not quite there yet.

    Granted, if there were some kind of readability scale, Joyce would most likely be on the “un-readable” side, however once you get the hang of his style, it does get easier to read.

    As for Tolkien, I still maintain that he is firmly entrenched on the “readable” side of this scale. His prose is very lyrical, and once you get into the rhythm of his work you can find yourself plowing through his novels.

  30. I just wanted to quickly comment on the “Ron immaturity” stint and character development. I think this is one of those cases where not engaging Ron in an episode of immaturity would have served to develop his character even further. Like others I just felt like we had been down that road too many times before and that in this case less would have been more.

  31. Great finish to a great story. I was completely engrossed, and I did not want to put the book down from beginning to end. However, there were a few things that bothered me along the way.

    For one, I felt like the Death Eaters were fairly weak in this last story. After seeming to be extraordinarily powerful in 5 and 6, their magic powers took a step backward in 7. I completely buy the Dobby aided escape from the Malfoy cellar, but it seemed a bit too easy for Harry to save Hermione from a room full of Death Eaters (including Bellatrix) immediately after. I also would have liked to see some duels between powerful good wizards and powerful bad wizards. How did Lupin die? Who killed him?

    Secondly, I am firmly in the camp that doesn’t like Ron. He is really annoying…and weak. I wasn’t even impressed with his rescue of Harry. He almost followed it up by not breaking the locket. That should have been a simple task. I am disappointed that he winds up with Hermione because she deserves much, much better. Growing on that, I wanted to see the depth of Harry and Hermione’s friendship. The closest JKR came to showing this was when Hermione lightly rubbed Harry’s head while walking into the tent when the 2 were at their lowest point. In my mind, Harry would die for Hermione before he would die for Ginny. That isn’t to say that he should be with Hermione over Ginny, but that their friendship is closer than any other friendship or love interest in the story.

    As for the epilogue, I agree that it was somewhat shallow, but I also found it important. We can tell that the world has changed from Harry’s comforting Albus about the potential for being selected into Slytherin. That isn’t considered a bad thing anymore. Harry has come a long way from the kid who didn’t want to be in Slytherin himself. The epilogue also completed the redempion of Snape with Harry calling him the bravest man he’s ever known.

    All together, it was an extremely satisfying ending and a great, fun read. I wish there were more books coming, but it is nice to have a conclusion.

  32. @ Chris:

    I hear ya, man. It took me a full week to read this one, whereas it took me a day or two days (max) to read 3-6.

    I really didn’t like this book for the conclusion of the series, because I felt that all of the minor plot lines in this book were new, rushed, and pushed onto us. I didn’t care one bit about the Horcruxes, though there was some comedy is Harry and Hermione camping out in the snow.

    I really wish that I could’ve liked this book, but I felt obligated to read it once I began instead of wanted to keep reading it.

    This book also rendered much of the past couple books useless. She could have been much more clever with integrating parts from OotP and HBP.

  33. Also, they really should’ve shown the James and Lily scenes in the OoTP movie to give us a glimpse for this book’s movie.

    There was a lot more wrong with that movie than just this, but I’m worried that the movies are going to continue to omit pertinent stuff.

  34. If you Google “Rowling funky prose”, this blog is the first hit.

  35. You’ve probably seen this already, but there’s a J.K. Rowling chat transcript that ties up all sorts of loose ends at http://www.mugglenet.com/app/news/full_story/1156

  36. Frank (not a Yankee fan)

    I’m confused at all this dislike for the 7th’s book ending…Did you not know Harry was going to win? And were you expecting a ‘Die Hard’ (original) ending?

    Disliking the all the camping, Ron’s hissy fits, Snape actually being a good guy (wow, another surprise), the Hallows or Dumbledore’s muggle hating past is fine, because as a fan that’s your right. But if you expected the book to end any different…why? Voldemort always overlooked the obvious and was defeated by something simple (except the basilisk/diary). Of the Death Eaters, only Bellatrix was a powerful witch/wizard (the rest relied on Voldy’s power). And did it not occur to anyone that Harry was a Horcruxes and would have to sacrifice himself?

    And why can’t you enjoy Harry Potter books, because they are entertaining and provide a fun read? Why try and break it down, then compare to other writers? I love Vonnegut, Asimov and Tolkien. I don’t recommend these books to anyone, because you find those books yourself. HP is a book you recommend to others.

    Keith, me being big Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Fiction fan, and you being a born again reader, have you read any of the ‘Fire and Ice’ George R.R. Martin series (as good as or better than Tolkien)? I would recommend Chuck Palahniuk too, but reading his books can cause serious disturbing images. And, lastly have you read O’Toole’s other novel, ‘The Neon Bible’?

  37. The one thing I really agree with Frank on is the ending – I thought all along Harry would win. It started as a children’s series, and that’s still a huge chunk of her readership. She wasn’t going to crush their little hearts.

    Frank – haven’t read any of those suggestions. I’d heard The Neon Bible was a little disjointed, reflecting his age when he wrote it. What did you think?

  38. Frank (not a Yankee fan)

    I agree. But at 16, and to write something like that…

    Still, nothing can top ‘Dunces’ and the best single character ever to be ripped off (my favorite is the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons).

    Although I don’t recommend it (at least at the moment, because it’s about 700 to 1000 pages each and people are still waiting for book 5 to come out) give ‘A Game of Thrones’ book one of George R.R. Martin’s epic, a try.

    If you don’t like it, maybe you can talk me into repaying the 7.99 you shelled out for it.

  39. Once again this book was fantastic. I find that the only people who did not like this book are the people who had theories that did not happen. I was surprised at most turns and very interested in all of the elements. Especially people who did like or understand the Horcruxes/Hallows. If you skimmed through this you missed out on this. I mostly feel really sorry for people like Chris who did not like this book, because their theories did not come come to pass and he did not get it.

  40. I just finished it today, and I thought I’d just chime in with what you said about post-Potter melancholy. I totally agree, which is kind of funny because I’ve only read each book once (enjoying them each time, but not having the time or the will to reread any but my favorite books of all time).

    But looking back, I really grew up with these books.

    When the first one was released in 1998 I was starting middle school, and my grandfather bought it for me (pre-hype, I say this not to brag of my early-adopter status, but more to highlight my surprise when it became such a phenomenon) for Christmas, I read it, and I enjoyed it and then I stopped thinking about it until it got big and I was like “oh, I remember reading that.”

    In the ensuing ten years I went from snobbishly putting down the books for some of their flaws (particularly the early books) to finally embracing that I get a huge kick out of them and reading them as soon as they came out. Didn’t have time for that this summer, but it’s nice to think that a series I’ve known all through middle and high schools and most of college ended so satisfyingly.

    Anyway, I agree with your review almost to the letter.

    Also, keep up the great work for espn.

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