Too slow, old man
Aug 12th, 2007 by handolio
I’ve just become, probably, the last person who gives a shit to finish reading Harry Potter. Granted, it’s not exactly Tolstoy, but the speed with which everybody else seemed to snarf it down makes me wonder if I’m missing a trick. Perhaps when I don’t have to read, digest and write freelance about stuff like this of a weekend I’ll be able to spend a day reading a book cover to cover. Except, of course, that’s it all done now.
I’m reminded of Lovely Rhod’s Facebook status (just a day after the Deathly Hallows’ release): “…is missing not knowing what happens next.” I wonder if he meant the subtle sense of anticlimax it conveys?
There’s no doubt, at least for me, that the seven books as a whole are a hell of an achievement, but with the final page turned I’m wondering if they were all they could have been. There are moments in all the books where it seems that JK takes her eye off the ball, and it’s normally either the pacing or Harry’s credibility that suffers. After the fifth book, which is so wayward you have to wonder if the series’ success left JK with too little time for a final edit, the sixth was a welcome return to form. For me, the seventh flits bewilderingly between the two.
Anyway, I’ve spent four weeks sticking two fingers in my ears and going “lalalalalalala” every time the subject of the final book came up in conversation. It’s not the result of cheap stage hypnosis, but of a friend’s son casually giving away the suprise of the penultimate book.
For him, then, in the unlikely case that he’s made slower progress than I, Snape is Harry’s father, Hermione his sister, and Dumbledore returns more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
