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| Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,
J K Rowling |
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| Books,
Jerry Carpenter,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F4
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It’s ‘Wild Swans’ all over again. Everyone on the tube, and people you meet at dinner parties are reading the same book. The surprise this time is that’s it’s a children’s book – well actually a trilogy of children’s books. So why has Harry Potter taken hold ? A hailstorm of hype in the Broad-sheet Review sections and creating special editions with adult friendly design (to minimise commuter embarrassment) can’t have done sales any harm. Thankfully the fact that the books are actually good are part of the equation too.
A leisurely read of the first confirms of few prejudices – yes, all the magical characters have whimsical names ( Albertus Dumbledore ??!!) and establishing paragraphs of the scenario set the world as some timeless place untouched by any modern idioms and culture references. These characters could have strolled out of the pages of any Enid Blyton novel, all jolly enthusiasms and confectionery obsession. But after a decade of ‘tuned-in’ kids movies with carbon copy culture wise characters it should be welcomed that such annoyances haven’t penetrated the book world.
Free from any reference to present day matters, Rowling concentrates in on creating a children’s fantasy thriller that doesn’t resort to Pratchett level irony when dealing with the supernatural, but also doesn’t come off as po-faced as C.S Lewis’ Narnia books either.
Deprived of both parents by an unknown malignant force, Harry Potter grows up unaware of his magical birthright living with his mean-spirited non-magic uncle, aunt and cousin. From here, our naïve hero is swept off into an education in magic at England’s premier magic college Hogwarts, and it’s the mysteries that unfold here that become the grand portion of the story.
Current reviews cite parallels with Roahl Dahl, and although the book rarely reaches the levels of misanthropy and spikiness of Dahl’s finest, there’s still a knowingness of the paranoia and rituals of school age behaviour that’s integral to creating compelling child characters . If anything my first brush with Rowling’s books puts me more in mind of Joan Aitken childrens adventures books, ‘black hearts at Battersea’, and ‘Night birds at Nantucket’ . Unlike Dahl’s books -which always have the feeling of a cautionary tale about them, these stories were more atmospheric and less morally judgmental.
Bloomsbury
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