Yes, I have been spending the last couple of days in the company of Harry, Ron and Hermione and renewing my acquaintance with the intrepid three and Dumbledore, Snape and Hagrid. I hope to be going to see the latest film in the next week or so and thought it would be a good idea to re-read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as I had forgotten a lot about it. Whenever I have a new Harry book, always bought the day of publication, I sit down and simply devour it and know that thousands of others, both young and adult, are doing the same. I am always eager to find out what is happening so rather rattle through it and best to let time pass and then come back to the story and refresh my memory.
After the Half-Blood Prince I then went on to read the final book in the series, HP and the Deathly Hallows which I felt at the time of reading was extraordinarily complicated and also that there was a section in the middle which sagged alarmingly. I wanted to see if I felt the same and I do. Each Harry book has got longer and longer and the last four have weighed in at over 600 pages which is quite a size and I honestly think that they would have been better if an editor had got hold of them. However, who is going to have the nerve to do that...
Editor: Hello JK I have been reading your latest Harry Potter and I really think it could do with a bit of editing
JK Rowling: Oh you do do you? And how much do you think needs to be deleted and taken out?
Editor: Well, in order to make it much tighter and less rambling, I would prune the middle section by about.....say, 200 pages
JK Rowling: "Petrificus Totalus!"
Yes, well enough said. It would take a brave editor to have this conversation.
I am not going to be sniffy about JK Rowling, but I have to be honest and say that I don't think she is a particularly brilliant writer, her denouements of each adventure tend to be really clunky, and in one particular episode Cornelius Fudge 'blustered' three times in three paragraphs which stuck out like a sore thumb and should have been spotted. OK call me pedant, I don't mind.
BUT, what is so wonderful about these books is the sheer breathless fun and pace of reading them. JKR has created the most terrific magical world that just takes the reader up and in and with each book you become more and more fond of the characters, yes even the ghastly Snape, who I always trusted even against all the odds. Of course, being played by the wickedly saturnine Alan Rickman probably helped a bit here. I remember when I read the first HP, and met Snape I just knew that if they made a film of HP that Alan Rickman was perfect casting....
Once I finished the Half-Blood Prince I then had to read the final book, the Deathly Hallows and while I found it rambling as I said earlier, I was overcome by admiration at the way JK has tied all the ends up, linked back to events that happened back in Books 1, 2 and 3 so that I kept saying 'Oh, NOW I understand...' quite brilliant.
It is the small things in this series that I have found of particular delight, Bertie Botts Flavoured Beans, Chocolate Frogs, Quick Quote Quill as used by Rita Skeeter (surely based on Marjorie Proops of many moons ago in the Daily Mirror), Extending Ears, Floo Powder and so on and so on. Quidditch, which certainly makes rounders sound pretty tame, the shops in Diagon Alley, the Pensieve, Erised in which sees one what desires (clever just to spell that backwards and name the mirror this way), the Sorting Hat...and I had better stop. When I think of the planning that went into these stories, I am lost in admiration. I remember seeing an interview with JKR when she said she had a notebook with a family tree and back story on every character whether she used it or not.
So in the end, I am beguiled and enchanted by Harry Potter and was so sad when the final book came out, the thought there was no more to look forward to was really a bit of a facer. The marvellous thing about this phenomenon is the way she has got children reading. Librarians used to be very sniffy about Enid Blyton when I was a kid and many libraries would not stock her books saying they were too simplistic and badly written. I remember being furious at this, because surely getting a child to read a book, any book, is of paramount importance and Enid B and the Famous Five and the Adventure series taught me that reading could be fun. Nobody is going to read Enid Blyton all their lives, most children go onto other things and I think it is simply magnificent that children in the 21st century, and don't forget we are talking the iPod, Gameboy, Computer generation here, will sit down with a book of 600+ pages and read it. Every publication day there were queues at bookshops at midnight to buy the latest HP and children would immediately plonk down on the floor, on the pavement, anywhere they could and start reading straightaway. Anybody who can get children that involved is a genius as far as I am concerned.
On a final note: I bought my last HP at a supermarket on a Saturday morning and as I stood in the check out queue there was at least one copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in each trolley. In front of me stood a gentleman with four copies and I could not resist asking him, Why Four? "Well, there is one each for the kids and one each for the wife and me and we are going to have a really great weekend as peace will reign in our house while we all read"
Enough said I think.
