This review is dedicated to Hermione Jean Grainger, who gave all us boys (current and former) eternal ho
'Shall we go, then?' (p.422, Bloomsbury 2007).
This review is dedicated to Hermione Jean Grainger, who gave all us boys (current and former) eternal hope...
Nothing I say will be original, I assume, since this book, among the others of the series, establishing its own sub-canon in magical fantasy, has been reviewed a million times and it's probably all been said. So no story synopsis, just impressions.
Rowling has the enviable ability to write in such a style that the reader feels comfortable in, and which flows. Her world-building is as powerful and integral, if not as vast in scope, as Tolkien's - although I suspect that part of the finale owes a debt to the Stone Table episode of Lewis's The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, too. When you read the series, you are immersed. And it doesn't strike you until the end, having finished this last final instalment, that there is no more, that's it, it's all over. And you miss it, very quickly.
Clearly the Harry Potter series, with perhaps the largest character list of any fantasy or epic series known, has a superb cast of characters, and most of the key characters (Harry, Dumbledore, Snape, Malfoy) all have seemingly stereotyped polar propensities (good v. bad, moral v. immoral, caring v. selfish), yet are also streamed with complications which make them so substantially real: Draco seems irredeemably malicious, Snape seems immovably selfish, Dumbledore incontrovertibly altruistic, and Harry so irrevocably destined as saviour. Yet as events unfold (the growing totalitarian state after Dumbledore's death), each of these characters is ultimately tested, and the only absolute along their destined path is Voldemort - with perhaps Bellatrix in tow, in her psychotic malevolence.
So many key characters show their trueness: Harry (his final sacrificial act), Snape (his final gift), Draco (his final act of humanity), Dumbledore (his final guidance), Neville (his indefatigable courage)... even Dudley finally gives something honest and true. Except Vernon, the irredeemable nowhere man. In their ways, the damned receive some degree of redemption, and the hallowed give even more, even after death. These characters are complex and superbly created and developed through the 7 literary years we follow this tale, woven with human strengths and graces, foibles and failings, nastiness and intelligent concern, all the panoply of human make-up.
Yet not all is perfect, of course. We know the fates of Harry and Voldemort, Dumbledore and Snape, but there are those that got away: Umbridge being the principal thorn. Rowling seeds such thorns all the way through the series (the Dursleys, Lucius, Skeeter) and in this final instalment (Draco, Bellatrix, Snape, Umbridge, Yaxley...), but I come out of this wonderful book and awesome series with a thorn unplucked, an irritation unbalmed, an open question shouting in my head: why was Umbridge not killed off?!
Of course, there are plot holes like British roadworks (you know, the ones presumably just mended). Bathilda's Secret, for example. (view spoiler)[Despite being 'Muggled' and wearing the invisibility cloak, Bagshot knows who Harry and Hermione are (Ron's off in a sulk, remember). And despite knowing that many Ministry wizards and witches are Imperiused, it doesn’t occur to them that Bagshot may be possessed. And although Harry could feel the tug of the locket responding to something at the threshold of her door, he couldn't put two and two together and think maybe it was caused by proximity to another of its kind? And then they follow her into her house, and she wants Harry to go upstairs alone with her. Might there be someone else in the house, waiting? But this did not occur to them, not even to the usually smart Hermione.
(hide spoiler)]But let's juxtaposition the few failings of plot device against the considerable merits of craftwomanship which Rowling has brought both in this episode and the series, not least superb character, action and place. Perhaps the most intriguing theme she has woven into her world of Harry and friends, enemies and those between or in both camps, is the psychological development between Harry and Voldemort, with Dumbledore and Snape in the middle.
'Souls? We were talking of minds!' 'In the case of Harry and Lord Voldemort, to speak of one is to speak of the other. (p.549)
For me, it is this aspect of the book, the series, which is its richest seam. It is the psychological chromatograph of her character development which gives the series such depth, such richness, so far from stereotypical black and white as the childish rivalries from Dumbledore's considerable compassionate intelligence. Why, in the end, do we love Snape as much as Dumbledore, as much as Harry and Hermione, and even Ron and Draco? Because his sacrifice and bravery are as much about love as about desire and loss - and it is loss that doesn't turn inwards, in the end - love finally triumphs. Compassion, empathy, these are Dumbledore's morality. We might never have expected them from Snape, nor Draco, all this time. This theme makes the Potter series a much broader and deeper discourse than 'merely' a magical tale.
It is not until two-thirds the way through this increasingly darkening episode that Harry - somewhat isolated from his two friends by his obsession with the Hallows - suddenly becomes irrevocably purposeful and steadfastly brave. (view spoiler)[It is Dobby's death which finally cements his certainty and steels his courage to an inevitable end, one way or the other. Dobby's unfaltering loyalty is something we seek in a best friend, and his death is pivotal to Harry's resolve, which has failed him since Dumbledore's death because of the unanswerable questions buzzing around in his mind about his mentor's intentions, and seeming withholding of vital information. In Dobby's sacrifice, (hide spoiler)]Harry sees how much Dumbledore had foreseen, and all his doubts disapparate. It is a little scene in the grand play of events, immediately following one of torture and the death of a degraded pawn, yet ironically one of the most human, from a free elf, but everything comes together from that point. It is these moments of elevation which raises the book from a tale of magical fantasy to an assertion of the best of human spirit through such revelations of all that is best: love, as Dumbledore would have had it.
The young characters grow up, before their time, Ron admittedly lagging behind - but finally he comes into his own. Let's not forget, he's stuck in that final internal rebellion against succumbing to Hermione, and this is really an altogether different dimension from 16-year-old crushes, and an added burden to him simply going through that inevitable teenage rebelliousness at authority and the world anyway. Ron is the last to take the leap into an early adulthood, into which Harry and Hermione and so many of their friends are thrust at so early an age. Even Draco.
But at the heart of all these believable psychological developments, maturations and becomings, is the heart of the series: not Harry, but Hermione. No character discussion here, just: the perfect girl. With witch's skills, even prowess. The perfect witch. (And she's got to be better looking than Pratchett's Esmerelda Weatherwax, hasn’t she?). Such fantasy takes art to create. Magic.
Merged review:
'Shall we go, then?' (p.422, Bloomsbury 2007).
This review is dedicated to Hermione Jean Grainger, who gave all us boys (current and former) eternal hope...
Nothing I say will be original, I assume, since this book, among the others of the series, establishing its own sub-canon in magical fantasy, has been reviewed a million times and it's probably all been said. So no story synopsis, just impressions.
Rowling has the enviable ability to write in such a style that the reader feels comfortable in, and which flows. Her world-building is as powerful and integral, if not as vast in scope, as Tolkien's - although I suspect that part of the finale owes a debt to the Stone Table episode of Lewis's The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, too. When you read the series, you are immersed. And it doesn't strike you until the end, having finished this last final instalment, that there is no more, that's it, it's all over. And you miss it, very quickly.
Clearly the Harry Potter series, with perhaps the largest character list of any fantasy or epic series known, has a superb cast of characters, and most of the key characters (Harry, Dumbledore, Snape, Malfoy) all have seemingly stereotyped polar propensities (good v. bad, moral v. immoral, caring v. selfish), yet are also streamed with complications which make them so substantially real: Draco seems irredeemably malicious, Snape seems immovably selfish, Dumbledore incontrovertibly altruistic, and Harry so irrevocably destined as saviour. Yet as events unfold (the growing totalitarian state after Dumbledore's death), each of these characters is ultimately tested, and the only absolute along their destined path is Voldemort - with perhaps Bellatrix in tow, in her psychotic malevolence.
So many key characters show their trueness: Harry (his final sacrificial act), Snape (his final gift), Draco (his final act of humanity), Dumbledore (his final guidance), Neville (his indefatigable courage)... even Dudley finally gives something honest and true. Except Vernon, the irredeemable nowhere man. In their ways, the damned receive some degree of redemption, and the hallowed give even more, even after death. These characters are complex and superbly created and developed through the 7 literary years we follow this tale, woven with human strengths and graces, foibles and failings, nastiness and intelligent concern, all the panoply of human make-up.
Yet not all is perfect, of course. We know the fates of Harry and Voldemort, Dumbledore and Snape, but there are those that got away: Umbridge being the principal thorn. Rowling seeds such thorns all the way through the series (the Dursleys, Lucius, Skeeter) and in this final instalment (Draco, Bellatrix, Snape, Umbridge, Yaxley...), but I come out of this wonderful book and awesome series with a thorn unplucked, an irritation unbalmed, an open question shouting in my head: why was Umbridge not killed off?!
Of course, there are plot holes like British roadworks (you know, the ones presumably just mended). Bathilda's Secret, for example. (view spoiler)[Despite being 'Muggled' and wearing the invisibility cloak, Bagshot knows who Harry and Hermione are (Ron's off in a sulk, remember). And despite knowing that many Ministry wizards and witches are Imperiused, it doesn’t occur to them that Bagshot may be possessed. And although Harry could feel the tug of the locket responding to something at the threshold of her door, he couldn't put two and two together and think maybe it was caused by proximity to another of its kind? And then they follow her into her house, and she wants Harry to go upstairs alone with her. Might there be someone else in the house, waiting? But this did not occur to them, not even to the usually smart Hermione.
(hide spoiler)]But let's juxtaposition the few failings of plot device against the considerable merits of craftwomanship which Rowling has brought both in this episode and the series, not least superb character, action and place. Perhaps the most intriguing theme she has woven into her world of Harry and friends, enemies and those between or in both camps, is the psychological development between Harry and Voldemort, with Dumbledore and Snape in the middle.
'Souls? We were talking of minds!' 'In the case of Harry and Lord Voldemort, to speak of one is to speak of the other. (p.549)
For me, it is this aspect of the book, the series, which is its richest seam. It is the psychological chromatograph of her character development which gives the series such depth, such richness, so far from stereotypical black and white as the childish rivalries from Dumbledore's considerable compassionate intelligence. Why, in the end, do we love Snape as much as Dumbledore, as much as Harry and Hermione, and even Ron and Draco? Because his sacrifice and bravery are as much about love as about desire and loss - and it is loss that doesn't turn inwards, in the end - love finally triumphs. Compassion, empathy, these are Dumbledore's morality. We might never have expected them from Snape, nor Draco, all this time. This theme makes the Potter series a much broader and deeper discourse than 'merely' a magical tale.
It is not until two-thirds the way through this increasingly darkening episode that Harry - somewhat isolated from his two friends by his obsession with the Hallows - suddenly becomes irrevocably purposeful and steadfastly brave. (view spoiler)[It is Dobby's death which finally cements his certainty and steels his courage to an inevitable end, one way or the other. Dobby's unfaltering loyalty is something we seek in a best friend, and his death is pivotal to Harry's resolve, which has failed him since Dumbledore's death because of the unanswerable questions buzzing around in his mind about his mentor's intentions, and seeming withholding of vital information. In Dobby's sacrifice, (hide spoiler)]Harry sees how much Dumbledore had foreseen, and all his doubts disapparate. It is a little scene in the grand play of events, immediately following one of torture and the death of a degraded pawn, yet ironically one of the most human, from a free elf, but everything comes together from that point. It is these moments of elevation which raises the book from a tale of magical fantasy to an assertion of the best of human spirit through such revelations of all that is best: love, as Dumbledore would have had it.
The young characters grow up, before their time, Ron admittedly lagging behind - but finally he comes into his own. Let's not forget, he's stuck in that final internal rebellion against succumbing to Hermione, and this is really an altogether different dimension from 16-year-old crushes, and an added burden to him simply going through that inevitable teenage rebelliousness at authority and the world anyway. Ron is the last to take the leap into an early adulthood, into which Harry and Hermione and so many of their friends are thrust at so early an age. Even Draco.
But at the heart of all these believable psychological developments, maturations and becomings, is the heart of the series: not Harry, but Hermione. No character discussion here, just: the perfect girl. With witch's skills, even prowess. The perfect witch. (And she's got to be better looking than Pratchett's Esmerelda Weatherwax, hasn’t she?). Such fantasy takes art to create. Magic....more
Anyone who avers that Terry Pratchett was not one of the great fantasy writers the world has known has not read that opening to the first Discworld noAnyone who avers that Terry Pratchett was not one of the great fantasy writers the world has known has not read that opening to the first Discworld novel, nor the rest of it, nor its successor, nor the following 39 Discworld novels, nor one of the five significant Discworld short stories published here, the best (and longest, including the deleted scene in appendix) being The Sea And Little Fishes. Pratchett's imagination was matched by his wit, affectionate humour, use of language, plotting, pacing, character creation, that humour again, and a handle on the quintessential oddness yet lovability of humanity - even if it must inevitably include the likes of Cpl. Nobby Nobbs. Even having to read some of the lesser offerings in this collection of miscellany would not put the inveterate Discworld fan off.
Yet, if it were not for the delicious feeling that the collectable Discworld short stories included here give to the completist fan, I would conclude that this collection of disparate and often weak little comedy skits served more the god of Mammon than that of Omnia, and would bristle at the purchase price (now shockingly £12!). But that's just cynical. One or two of the short shorts, like 'FTB', which was one idea while Hogfather (1995) was born, are neat, but most not. However, the longer short stories are of greatly improved quality, and marry more with the experience of the writer of 41 wonderful Discworld novels (mostly) and a couple of entertaining early sci-fi ones.
Even while the longer of the 11 Discworld tales included are available online or in fantasy compendiums like Wizards Of Odd: Comic Tales Of Fantasy (1996, ed. Peter Haining) and are worth both having and reading - The Sea And Little Fishes, a tale about Granny Weatherwax, makes the purchase almost worthwhile by itself - many of the 3-4 page little numbers in this collection are regrettably not of the same quality. But a writer has to start somewhere, write?
Thus, as an insight into the genesis of a born writer - and the opening paragraphs of the opening story here, written when Pratchett was 13, is a perfect piece of writing, proving this point very early - this collection has pointers of the origins of some later works, like Truckers (1989), of the Truckers, Diggers (1990) and Wings (1990) children's trilogy, and Rincewind's appearance in the opening sally of the Discworld series (1983), while another might be the origin story of (or a deleted scene from) Men At Arms (1993), and 'The High Meggas' is the genesis of The Long (Etc.) Earth (2012) - and is excellent. 'Once And Future' also is a gem.
All the pieces have a brief introduction by the author, and collectively they provide a potted biography of the writer's early days as a journalist, while adding more colour to the stray octarine clutch of Discworld miscellany such as the companions, diaries and maps, allowing that completist fan the immense pleasure of saying: 'I've (nearly) read ALL of Terry Pratchett's Discworld writings!' Nearly. Nearly will have to do. Nearly is what many of this collection almost are, while many are little worthwhile, and some are superb. It is, after all, a collection for the completist fan.
And yet, that 'nearly', which hung silently over the end of The Sea And Little Fishes, was made up for by the appendix of the deleted scene when it was first published in 1998, the perfectly apt ending to this collection. I felt that that short story ended untypically - knowing Granny Weatherwax. Esme Weatherwax is clearly Terry Pratchett's most beloved character: her epitaph and ending in, and the subject of the story of his last Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown (2015) just a few months before his own, proved that.
It would be wholly out of character to leave Esme Weatherwax standing under such circumstances with such outrage hanging over her. This deleted scene finished that tale off properly, and more, it was written with a love of that character, and her ever-present friend, that ran deep through such a seeming afterthought of a placement, in an appendix - yet it summed up everything fine about his world and his most beloved characters, as well as the sentiment that struck true, even amidst his most riotous humour and character. It was a fitting ending from a wonderful fantasist, and made this varied collection utterly worthwhile. Mind how you go....more
A pretty hard book to take, it is persistently intense. Firstly, there's the initial reactions: 'why on Earth would you put up withThe end of silence.
A pretty hard book to take, it is persistently intense. Firstly, there's the initial reactions: 'why on Earth would you put up with even a tenth of that gutter tripe from that mouthy school bully?!;, and, stand up and say outright what it means to you in front of the class, put him down, and walk away. or better still, 'put him down', with a good old kick in the balls. He won't be laughing then. And this really expresses my problem with its emotional positioning straight away: Izzy, victim of misogynist 'banter' from Jacob AND her stepfather at home, behaves, mentally, in the first person interiority of her torment, like a victim. Just dock him! They'll never look at you the same way again. And do it in front of Max, in case the ****er gets up.
So, yeah, I was kind of angry pretty quickly, and felt uncomfortably shoved into a victim story, where the victim - unlike her black feminist gay friend Grace, a pretty tough combination to follow - doesn't exercise any rights of the 'peripherally' abused. These are not just the awkward 'rights of passage' of the coming-of-age story, though, this is pretty much a persistent stream of abuse from the school jerk and the sneery stepfather. At home but not at work, or at work but not at home: survival. But in both: nightmare. Izzy may not believe in fairies any more, but she is certainly in need of some knight on a white charger, even if the metaphor is patriarchal. If only she could really rely on Grace's understanding support, or Max's understanding. But she doesn't come out and say it as it is. And so, I felt manipulated into a very tight and incessantly intense corner. But that's the purpose of the novel, isn't it, to put you in her place, so you might understand?
However, this comes at a cost. You start, very early on, to not respect Izzy, because she doesn't think clearly about anything. She doesn't stop to think, but is overloaded with emotional freight, which makes her a cipher. The intention of filling in the silence through her first person interiority is to give her a voice which we listen to. But there comes a point where all this screaming and pleading and giving in feels so saturated in weakness and hopelessness - the hope being that she will speak out against someone, to someone - is a constant barrage of self-doubt, self-hate, hate, and still more hate. There's no positives in it, only regrets, denials, enslavement to ugly feelings and what others may think of her, it's difficult to believe that anyone would not fight back at some point somewhere. Could this really be probable? Is this how someone out there normally feels? In its extremity, do we believe enough that we at least stick out the remainder of this incessant shrieking? Using all logic to justify her fears, doubts, enslavement? Is the quality of the writing, necessarily levelled at a young adult audience, enough for us to trawl through this miasma of misery?
It doesn't occur to Izzy early on that switching off her phone will solve half of her problems. The other half are what the book is also informing us, and that's finding a support network that will help with setting up a new home away from the home abuse. You realise that when you've got nowhere else to go - parents, siblings, relatives - you have to have somewhere to go, that's the only practical step that's going to prevent the immediate continuance of abuse. You realise the lifeline those organisations offer.
And while Izzy and her mum take that break, the knight on a white charger comes by. Izzy finds her strength, the strength to face her problems with her mum and her temporarily lost best friend, and face the necessary confrontations with the school bully and her manipulative stepfather. We breathe a sigh of relief, the energy of the piece has swooped up, the hate has dissipated and the positives appeared. We appear out of the fog of self-hate and internal screaming to a litany of affirmative action. It took two-thirds of the novel to arrive, but in the end, all it took was a break, a spell of healthy independent friendship and a realisation that Izzy could be actively loved for who she is, not what others wanted her to be for them.
This has been the most difficult YA novel I've read, and far from the most positive. Personally I preferred Garden's Annie On My Mind (1982). Annie demonstrated a maturity that Izzy hardly does, but Annie was already liked and respected at school and loved at home. Izzy started with none of this, and the barrage of assault that takes up much of the novel is brutal in its incessancy. It doesn't involve drugs or gangs, but bludgeons with coercion and rape. And it is somewhat of a relief that it is not all women who help resolve these problems, while the female support network is vital to its outcome. So at least it is in some part a vindication that not all men are like Jacob and Daniel. Why do I feel let off the hook, though?
That's because silence is not permission or collusion, that there's a clear line between misreading the signs and manipulation, that in the worsening world of contemporary politics, power is abused and abused, and silence there is a form of collusion. We see it in American political and corporate life, in British entertainment and sport, we see it countered in the MeToo movement and the outing of manipulative men, and the mix of all this is a confusion of tolerance and intolerance. But the line is always clear. Read Gaitskill's This Is Pleasure (2019) and watch Bombshell (2019). They are riddled with complications, dilemmas. But the line is always clear. Things are changing, in that others are more inclined to come forward. But first, you have to help yourself. Speak. Sooner....more
A double first person narrative of David, 14, who has wanted to be a girl since he was at least 8, and Leo, who likes Alicia, and becomes friends withA double first person narrative of David, 14, who has wanted to be a girl since he was at least 8, and Leo, who likes Alicia, and becomes friends with David. Gender is fluid, typically a polarised social construct based on the pink and blue of our infancy and reinforced through our parents, toys, school and many other aspects, but even though we might be male or female sexually, our identities consist of both male and female qualities and responses. Just because you're a boy and wear pink socks doesn't make you odd because some unthinking person teases you about it. Just because you're a girl and play like a tomboy doesn't make you odd, even though you're rarely teased about it. But dealing with a dominant desire to be a girl when you’re a boy, that takes some handling.
Williamson presents an ordinary day in the life of both David and Leo, with their own idiosyncrasies and family and school issues, but keeps something in reserve which she hints at through Leo's interiority. As both 'boys' establish relationships in the somewhat brutal bustle of school, public reaction governs and limits their freedom of movement and expression, reputations formed out of rumour and relationships out of the need to connect, to love and be loved, seen and recognised for themselves. Nothing unusual here, and the brief bullying is quickly halted. (Another YA novel about bullying, I swear I'd scream).
And while we like both these boys, as the novel moves towards its peak, it suddenly gets duller, the tension seeps away, and what was an ordinary day in the life of two likable gender-questioning characters becomes a bit of struggle in its deepening ordinariness. It is, however, very nicely written, if a little too middling British to be unusual enough for interest. That might be the point, though, to set up an unusualness to allow the developing personalities to come forth. The obstructions, however, aren't epic enough to raise it to a heartbreaker, but again, that's the point, not of two boys trying to fit in, but of being accepted into an ordinary world, allowed to be themselves in an otherwise everyday life. While I find it now improbable that the typical youth reaction would be the redneck one we encounter here, that's because we now largely move in informed circles aware and tolerant of many LBGTQ issues. Remembering my time at a secondary modern, where glam-rock allowed us a little leeway in our gender representation, I'm pretty certain I'd never have had the courage to go to a school ball wearing a dress, even though I wore the make-up. The reaction would have been as expected.
Even while this longish novel didn't move me, I liked it - enough to finish it, and to come away with a liking for the characters, including Leo and David's friends. It takes in a lot, and in a warm voice not dissimilar from the author photo in the inside cover, and simply because I didn't encounter these issues myself as a teen, a lot of people have, are and will, and I wish them all the luck the world has to offer in their journey....more
A first person narrative about a fourteen-year-old teenager who is bullied at school, told retrospectively in interviews with his legal counsel in theA first person narrative about a fourteen-year-old teenager who is bullied at school, told retrospectively in interviews with his legal counsel in the present, while being held in a juvenile detention centre awaiting trial for murder.
But this story about Gray doesn't seem to me to be by the same author as Annie On My Mind (1982).
Annie On My Mind sensitively handled the same-sex inclinations and love of a teenage girl, addressing the hypocrisy of the modern world, the reactionary parents and teachers, and in particular a conservative headmistress. Pitching the emotional tenor of such pieces is a fine skill, and Annie convinced me of the problems of 'public opinion' in a largely white conservative heteronormal world, but didn't manipulate me into anger against the conservative type. Instead, Garden guided her story so that our sympathies were evoked through Annie's sensitivity, and in particular because Annie was a smart everyday girl who just so happened to fall in love with another smart sensitive girl.
However, in Endgame, Garden doesn't steer this line. What she does is offer caricatures and manipulation. You’re meant to have sympathy for the teenager who's good at music, but who can't even be honest about the problems he's facing from the archetypal school bullies. This is because the dad tends to anger and occasional violence, and the mum is too cowed to stand up to the father and steer a reasonable course at home. The older brother, who would certainly have heard about the bullying at school, does nothing to help or intervene. The teachers, who are surely now trained to see the flags of such perennial problems at school, do nothing to stop it, and some even turn a blind eye because the bullies are the popular varsity jocks. And the friend who is also bullied takes it lying down, because that's how you’re 'supposed' to deal with trouble at school, not grass. Stiff upper lip, despite split upper lip.
Alll of this, and much more, becomes an issue, because every single support group supposed to be either trained (guidance counselling, teachers, form teachers) or in the picture (parents, brother, friends) fails him. But he also fails himself. Not that I don't understand. I used to carry a knife around for a year after I was beaten up by a group of thugs, whom the CID couldn't prosecute, because I was too concussed to identify them. That was foolish and wrong. I also witnessed severe bullying at school from people I knew and was able to put a stop to it, but not until the brutal act had just been committed. That was difficult. So I know a bit about the subject first hand from two perspectives. But on neither occasion did all support groups let me down. My dad was angry that I had put myself in the position that I could be assaulted, but he was there to pick me up. My deputy head threatened me with a beating if I didn't give up the names of the two bullies I knew, one of whom I knew was severely bullied by his father, and who I found at home confiding in my mum one afternoon. Both situations could have forced me to go completely quiet, become uncooperative, and even withdraw with a very angry grudge. It took years before that anger over being assaulted went away. I was there.
But what makes me angry about the story Garden paints is not the injustice of all those failures of systems and parents, but that the characters are all caricatures, because nobody is that stupid, that reactive, that reactionary. Judges, maybe, I'll grant - but they have probably had all empathy burned out long ago, seeing such brutal thuggery and violence for so long every day for decades. But not every responsible person in the story? And no point at which the pattern wasn't recognised by someone? I simply do not believe it. The authoritarian world isn’t that unanimously purblind. Nor do I accept that Gray, who is not bright like Annie, would pretend that nothing was wrong to his parents simply because his father 'got mad', or from some vague fear that his mother would. It's all too skewed, all of it.
I am not convinced, and feel manipulated, and am disappointed. This is a weak novel which did not evoke my sympathy, because it was not credible....more
A clever little opening with scant clues of the identity of two new characters brought together to reveal the mystery that is JJ. We await the revelatA clever little opening with scant clues of the identity of two new characters brought together to reveal the mystery that is JJ. We await the revelation of the horror six years before, sure that it was some accident, but it takes a long time coming. Meanwhile, we get to know and like Alice, as a series of flashbacks reveals her childhood. I am writing about second chances right now, for my dissertation. Where will this one go, for those romances usually end the story with the gifted second chance - they don't tell us how well the gifted cope with their changed fortunes, as this does. But the mercy of the second chance is fraught with the possibility of going backwards. Or being sucked backwards...
What this story does point up - as if we needed reminding - is the intransigent immorality of the newspapers. The old conflict between purveying the truth as a responsible fourth estate and running exposés on private individuals out of some scurrilous prurience in assuming that anyone in the public eye must somehow love it (a product of the silly 'celebrity' culture) is at question, and really it's a no-brainer. Live and let live.
This is not the story from the victim's perspective, and it's interesting for being from the perpetrator's. How do you construct a new life, or live with yourself when something so drastic has caused you to kill? It's an entirely hypothetical issue, under the circumstances, children being innocent since Rousseau, corrupted through the process of growing up. Very few can answer with anything but hypotheses, and so it's nigh impossible to have any benchmark by which to judge a narrative such as Jennifer's, but Cassidy handles it with expert sensitivity.
However, the middle half of this novel is murky and highly unpleasant, and just gets worse. At its heart are three incontrovertible certainties: an abusive mother through persistent negligence; an immoral press; and a crying heart deserving of a second chance. Plus a handful of caring women. Jennifer's story was really well handled, but after a while I wearied of its incessant depravity....more
A good story and characterisation written in a somewhat stilted style, with the occasional adverbial oddity. Most won't notice, though, because story A good story and characterisation written in a somewhat stilted style, with the occasional adverbial oddity. Most won't notice, though, because story and character are key in an essentially plotless novel where only two characters are truly developed.
Bella is not a heroine, more of an anti-heroine. She has no sense of direction, has poor coordination, is lousy at any sport, can't dance, tends to fall over easily, 'one of those people who just attracts accidents like a magnet' (p.93), and behaves largely like a bumbling fool in front of Edward Cullen, whose glamour has her in thrall. The incident with the skidding van has set her conflicted feelings towards him in a spin again, and his sudden mood swings, teasing arrogance and seeming invulnerability make it impossible to place him or even to communicate with him. This is not Lois and Clark, as he reminds her, thawed now to her pull on him: 'What if I'm not a superhero? What if I'm the bad guy?' (p.79). Would she care? She is, of course, under the spell of a vampire's glamour, charisma, diamante charm. Nothing she could do would prevent the inevitable. The mystery to us all is not that she is eternally under his spell, but why he is under hers?
Gradually Meyer teases out the clues, like a silken thread from a spider's spinneret, until Bella is caught in his web, and he in hers. She's the only mortal who he cannot read, a unique ability of his vampirism that fails him only with her, and so she is apart from the class of humans in more ways than merely her own loner consciousness. Bella isn't introduced to us as special, but as a newbie, and the gradual reveals of the specialness in her and Edward's relationship are the real draw of the character development. For very soon, Bella and Edward become inseparable.
There are so many atavistic compulsions in us which Meyer draws upon here, and the glamour of the romance is the central repository. Exponential pheromonic imperative. Add to this a high degree of danger, and a (in the film, significant) troilist complication, and we have enough complexity to create a believable world, even amongst vampires and werewolves, because Meyer deploys her central romantic trope credibly, her fantasy world almost entirely symbolic. Angela Carter's anti-fairy tales come to mind, particularly A Company of Wolves, or any from The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories (1979). It's that glamour, of the ingénue ineluctably drawn to the fascinating appeal-terror of the unknown, the wild, the uncanny, the contradictory mix of sexual attraction that is in us all, which she symbolises in her romantic chiasma. But for Bella, the answer - despite all her seeming denial - would always be 'yes'. We don't need to be told that there's an awful lot of fluttering eyelids or dilated pupils. We only have to look at those that fascinate us - and typically signal a disastrous relationship in the failing - to know that neither can deny their seeming fate, and we're in. Meyer understands the polarities and complexities of sexual attraction. Even in a young adult school story, where they - vampires apart - do not.
It took me a long while before I realised that the cover represents a 'V', and that the apple is that offered to Eve - the ultimate temptation. It took even longer to realise why the Cullens have chosen the rain-saturated town of Forks to live in. Clearly I'm not tuned into vampires.
Lots of Meyer's writing could be accelerated, but she wants to concentrate on Bella's slow reactions to things, emphasising the slow appreciation of her changed world with Edward over the instant pheromonic imperative of having to have him. In a sense, this is a literary device we can appreciate, if we just got into it; in another, it's a great frustration, and why the film is the more immediate experience. All Bella has to do is stutter often enough, and we get the message - but don't wait to feel what she is experiencing. Reading this development, while taking a lot longer, it all becomes more intimate, twings and twangs of our own experience reinforcing hers. While Meyer does move us through the gamut of sensoria - sight, touch, smell etc. - as Bella builds a more complete physical sensation of him, the visual compulsion of the film is only partly present in the book (the diamante skin under sunlight, a good example).
Problem is, once the danger is passed and Bella is 'safe' from Edward 's advances, it all tends to melt into naïve mush. You know, the mush that is the insanely obsessive period of love acknowledged, all gooey and childlike, embarrassing and not to be shared. Meyer writes like an obsessed teenager, Bella fainting from a kiss on the forehead, exchanges of puppy love. It doesn't really work, and there is a desperate need to move past that phase fast. A serious edit of the beginning of 'The Cullens' was necessary and not applied. I'm not even sure this was par for YA. Such scenes are certainly better and more maturely handled by other YA writers, Garden's Annie On My Mind (1982) for example. They may be new to such obsessive love, but we're not, and this detracts from the long, slow build of the story otherwise tolerably maturing.
By two-thirds, then, I was counting pages. Then it took an upturn, all the mushy stuff over, and I liked it again, as it turned into a chase thriller. Phew, thank goodness for that! And James was a truly evil thing.
It is one of those romances which, like the characters in love, satisfies and infuriates by turns. The complex, if not confused, communications between Bella and Edward - which takes up the greater part of it - sometimes feels like an over-long game of table tennis without the exciting back-court play. But in the end this jostling for parity - and for one of them to say '"never", okay, no more need be said' - is just a lot of eye fluttering. After a while, it gets well old....more
A superbly written, well-paced, well-balanced, original young adult work that provides a unique first person insight into our female protagonist, KatnA superbly written, well-paced, well-balanced, original young adult work that provides a unique first person insight into our female protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, the girl on fire. Fans of the book will gratified to know that I was not expecting such a high literary quality after having seen the films that bombarded us over the years, which suffer from the same propensity to stretch out the finale in two offerings, but where this works with Harry Potter so well, and can be filled in with plenty of action in The Hobbit, causes the penultimate Mockingjay to drag.
Suzanne Collins has pulled off something which the film - while true to the world-building - doesn't quite do, and that is the interiority of Katniss, whom we see in the film as the largely mardy Jennifer Lawrence, who, while captivating, acts little through facial nuance to portray what the book is always redefining, her emotional life. But there is so much to the world of the Hunger Games, the film keeps us going through action. The games themselves, and Panem as a civilisational entity, have no real causal grounding in the book - brief mention of the annihilating civil war and the need for the districts and enslavement of the working class, but largely left to the imagination without complete sociological exposition - yet the premise stands for the excesses of capitalist greed, the widening gap between the haves and have-nots, and so has a universal conceptual trueness that works as logical. Sociological verisimilitude is vital to fantasy and SF, even if it includes magic.
The magic in Collins's novel is, of course, the complicated relationship between Katniss and Peter, the theme which forms the emotional structure throughout the trilogy. While Katniss is 'sullen and hostile' (p.135), Peter has a sort of natural 'self-deprecating humour', and is the perfect foil for her. He also provides the emotional baseline about which she jerks and subsides, like a tortured marionette, and this difference, not a match made in heaven, but a healthy complementarity, works well both for the trials of the games and the emotional relationship they develop over the three years.
The testament of a good book well written is that you fly through the pages. There is one mildly dull section before the finale, but that also strengthens the bond between Katniss and Peeta which sees us through the trilogy. If love is born of kindness, this is its success. It is this humane triumph which stands against the inhumanity of Panem and its sickening privilege, and while historical overthrow of oppressive regimes (France, Russia) have not offered the world any more parity than the slow gains of liberalism and democracy, the chances of success based on kindness are evident throughout liberal daily life. Collins puts this heart into her work, and that's what makes it work as a piece of fiction, regardless of the successive waves of rebellion and final victory of the series. It does make me want to read on. And that's a nice surprise....more
A hundred and fifty pages too long, this meet-cute YA piece wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. That said, Rowling's books - upon which foundationA hundred and fifty pages too long, this meet-cute YA piece wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. That said, Rowling's books - upon which foundation the central character (a very likeable Cath) writes her fanfiction - were full of action. This one is full of none. There are some supreme novels and short stories out there where nothing much happens, but are dense with meaning and superlative writing. This isn't one of them. It's about a shy girl who meets an outgoing boy at university. She's got personality, but doesn't extend it beyond her fanfiction writing. And the episodes of that are a little too twee for me, and sometimes plain icky, like the lovey-dovey parts the novel descends into.
Rowell is good at dialogue and a certain measure of fun smartness in her quips and references, a fine sense of observation, and some exquisite half-liners, just no 'go'. If I'd wanted to read a roll of wallpaper of neat quips, I would have done that. Her characterisation is good, her dialogue good, her askance observations often good, but without action, it's only part of a novel. I guess it suffers from that which Rowling never did: big ideas.
Not my first choice of study, or even read....more
Ginny: I know it is. They can't bugger up the ending of this - it'd be sheer luAct Four, Scene Eleven
Albus: It's going to be okay, you know that, Mum?
Ginny: I know it is. They can't bugger up the ending of this - it'd be sheer lunacy.
Albus: Well they buggered up the beginning...
Ginny: Did they? How?
Albus: I'll tell you....
There were some unwritten laws at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Voldemort is dead; and Draco and Harry came to a very clear understanding, agreeing to disagree. They all grew up much older than their years during the Battle of Hogwarts.
It is therefore well beyond any suspension-of-disbelief expectations to even imply that Voldemort can return (in any way, shape or form, as Voldemort), and that Draco Malfoy is still a spoilt brat with the biggest grudge in the world for Harry, the Chosen One. To portray him as such still is simply not credible; he's as battle-scarred and war-weary as any of them - and this brings a new and substantial kind of maturity.
So, frankly, these two premises being undone simply won't wash. Bad ideas lead to bad storylines. These are bad ideas; they're not just bad, they're intellectually insulting. The past is the past, even with a Time-Turner. You cannot change the development of the soul. You can think you can stop it (Cedric), but you can't. It moves on, but never regresses. These three fundamental rules (Voldemort as a being no longer exists, his soul has moved on, Draco has matured beyond the petty evils of jealousy and spite, and souls moving on after death) cannot be contravened, the intellect rejects any attempt to alter them. They are not transmutable.
Now, if Voldemort's soul has found its way into another being not strong enough to contend with its darkness, there might feasibly be a let-out there, and a way forward. But, and categorically, Voldemort himself cannot come back. Draco has grown up. The story arc should too. And it finally does, by half way, when Draco speaks like the man he is, Harry's equal and friend - for far more bound them to a loyalty than the easiness of a former friendship. But this only happens after a childish red herring about Draco's immaturity and their false rivalry, as though they were still children. In other words, after our intelligence has been insulted in a cheap attempt at manipulation, and their characters - the ones we all knew, in that phenomenal maturation of the story arc in The Half-Blood Prince - had been corrupted. Cheap, silly, immature. Not us. Not them.
After the superb maturation of the series and the richness of the central characters and the subtle and skilful development of their relationships, some new bod comes along and treats us like ten-year-olds! Bad show! It's all corrected by a page and a half of Draco's wise summing up on growing up, friendship, loneliness, trust and outcomes of the lack. Beautifully articulated. But you've already pulled a dumb trick on us. That is not forgivable. And it lets the entire series down. All that finesse of psychological and relational development....
Despite how bad this gets, and how good it can be in places (that speech by Draco), it is merely a reflection of the superb world- and character-building of Rowling's original seven. Whatever comes after has to be but a shadow, even if endorsed or originated by her. Because the Harry Potter world, that life of the seven books, is a thing of itself now, that lake which reflects the mists swirling off. It is complete, living in its own time, and in a very real way, sacrosanct. Meddling like this is pretty, clever, but ultimately a frail imitation, a curling vapour borrowed from the pool of our collective consciousness.
To say that Jack Thorne did 'beautiful things' when he entered her world is partly true, yes; he also did some rubbish things, and one of those principally was to use the cheap trick of non-valid regression, mess with a complete and contained world gifted us in those seven books. It's like Tolkien's son writing a sequel to The Lord of the Rings and making Frodo Archimandrite of Mordor. Even for a day, that's fundamentally wrong. It's wrong because, under the greatest burden of perverse influence, he fights with every photon of light in his soul not to submit to evil.
'What could have been' is the tension of the present in the reading of the seven, it is a live and living thing that is the pulse of its power, that propels us through its and our morality, the thread that binds us, the thing we share in the experience, and in its own time. Buggering about with that is another fundamental rule broken, and a creative and expert writer knows this is one of those divine threads you just do not mess with. Twist it, cut it, and it screams against the laws of Nature, the laws of this wonderful, deeply created world. It's iconoclastic, meretricious and just plain wrong.
Some things are better left undone. In this case, in the words of Macbeth, 'What's done cannot be undone' (5.1.63-4). Shame.
Otherwise, it was very clever, and I enjoyed it....more
'And now, Harry,' said Dumbledore, 'let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.' (p.58, Bloomsbury 2005).
And so begin'And now, Harry,' said Dumbledore, 'let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.' (p.58, Bloomsbury 2005).
And so begins episode 6 of the Harry Potter saga.
The books get darker. Voldemort is back - as if we didn’t know, but the Ministry cannot now deny it. There's a war on, and the threat of the Death Eaters has overflowed into Muggle life and politics. The Dursleys are unchanged, but Dumbledore gives them a shaming and a warning - of which only Petunia responds as though she's aware.
Well, we all know what happens...
But is this a better book as the series ramps up to its finale? Do the books get better, each successive one, than the predecessor? Largely, yes - with the exception that The Prisoner Of Azkaban [1999] was a better book than The Order Of The Phoenix [2000]. But overall, yes. As Harry and his friends grow up the stakes are less about points awarded to houses or Quidditch scores and childish rivalries - although these are all still here - the rivalries are moving towards serious tasks of becoming: Harry as The Chosen One, Malfoy as his equivalent for the dark forces, and inbetween them, Dumbledore and Snape.
There is still a great deal of adolescent silliness in this book, particularly from Ron, who is the butt of foolishness throughout the series, but in the end his loyalty is key to Harry's wellbeing, yet offers in this a foil against Harry's more intelligent thinking and theories (Rowling has used this ploy to great and irritating effect throughout), since Ron is always far behind, being entrenched in his own stubbornness and deficiencies, testing Harry's patience, while imbroiled in his fumbling feelings towards Hermione.
The stakes are now life and death - on a potentially vast scale. For the existence of the Ministry and the Wizengamot is to protect the Muggle public as well as their own forces for good. Death is not the least of their troubles: coercion, torture and murder, the ways of enslavement and death hover unnervingly in the background, as well as false imprisonment. A totalitarian state unlike any predecessor - and they are and were all atrocious. This is the mood J.K. Rowling builds in this penultimate novel in the series, amidst the old childish rivalries, now adolescent.
Can we take a Harry Potter book this seriously, though? Certainly, if the mood is created, built until breaking, until a personal tragedy causes the death of one of the key principals, to show how bad it can get, to show how hope can be sucked out of the world. It's now no more about mastering a broom or a Patronus spell - it's about mastering your fear and the Killing Curse (Avada Kedavra). It's about having the courage to bear the eternal depression seeping into the world, and fighting the fight - more like a wartime resilience than a set of childish anxieties. And Harry and his pals are just sixteen. It's about staying true friends as times get harder, and not breaking. The morals are sterner. The psychology of fear darker.
But throughout Rowling doesn't fail to write well and entertainingly. The old rivalries between Malfoy and Potter have become far more hateful, but the support around Harry is crucial in him not developing his hate but making the transition towards a morality and courage needed to stand against the forces of evil. Dumbledore is key to this in this novel. Malfoy is as much a victim of He... and his dark powers as are his parents, both seemingly tied to evil, yet Narcissa in particular showing her desperate maternal protection and compromise early on in the face of Lestrange and Snape, when an important bond is sealed. A key subplot, Rowling introduces it as a dual mystery which leads to a plot shock that was very much the kept secret and central to the book's hype at the time of publishing.
Yet there are significant flaws. One of the main frustrations of its predecessor was that no one believed Harry about Voldemort's return. Clearly this device was pivotal in the protraction of successes of the Death Eaters and the annoyance of the Ministry's ineffectiveness and Fudge's gullibility and mishandling, in a foolish attempt to keep his post, as well as to allow that awful Umbridge to exact her selfish vicious cruelty. But now, it seems, Hermione and Ron do not believe Harry's theory that Malfoy is up to something seriously wicked, despite the fact that Hermione, explaining Harry's enormous popularity (p.207), has pointed out that he now has credibility as well as popularity, everyone believes him now they have seen Voldemort ('And you've been through all that persecution from the Ministry when they were trying to make out you were unstable and a liar'). The two don't stand up. Minor continuity niggle, perhaps, but frustrating credibility flaw.
Even so, there is an intricacy of plot, large and small, and to keep the momentum throughout with hardly a dull moment - Potions, Ron and Lavender - and keep that momentum going as a series, is as impressive as the creativity and fluid writing.
My copy smelt strangely of vinegar - probably the remaining odour of a potions spell gone wrong. (A for Average).
As for the novel: E for Exceeds Expectations. Despite the fact that I knew most of what was coming....more
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