Dan's Papers - August 10, 2007 - review: deathly hallows

Nine years after Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, we finally have the long awaited seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series. As for the book itself, clocking in at 759 pages, it's quite a hefty read, and the second longest book in the series. Thankfully, Deathly Hallows is deserving of every page.

Deathly Hallows certainly has a lot to live up to, and as such, it's a little bit of a letdown that in Harry's first appearance, he's staying with his mean Aunt and Uncle for what is...well, the seventh time. But almost as if reading our minds, Harry is whisked away by his magical accomplices within a few pages, and it's here that the seventh installment sets itself apart. This book is by far the most action-packed of the series and throughout all 700-plus pages, Rowling keeps it fast and fresh. That's especially necessary in this book, where, for the first time, neither Harry nor his best friends, Ron and Hermione return to Hogwarts for school. This time they're all on their own, in search of objects known as "Horcruxes," believed to house fragments of the evil Voldemort's soul.

Being sixteen-years-old, I have had the unique experience of growing up with Harry and having my age mostly mirror his own. It has been a very rewarding experience, maturing with Harry from his naiive first book form, to his whiny fifth book form and finally to his emergence as a young adult in the final one. Rowling seems to expect a certain maturity from her readers, and they'll need it to tolerate things like Harry's first use of the Dark Arts. Using an unforgivable curse to torture one of Voldemort's cohorts. Harry moodily remarks that for the spell to work, "you really have to mean it."

After years of practice, Rowling really knows pacing and it shows in this book. It's a real page-turner from beginning to end, with answered questions immediately being replaced with new mysteries to be solved. But at no time is the reader fooled into thinking that the scavenger hunt search is the main attraction. That honor belongs distinctly to the long awaited confrontation between Harry and Voldemort lurking in the penultimate chapter, where, for the first time, literary laws allow one (or both) of them to be killed.

Until the end, Deathly Hallows is great, both for breaking the tired formula that all previous books have followed and for striking new thematic ground. And it is just for these reasons that its end is so disappointing. After thousands of pages of buildup throughout seven books, we are left with an ending that would have seemed childish, even by the third book. This is not to say that Harry's death would in and of itself have made a great ending, but simply that after years of following Harry's adventures, I expected something a little more satisfying than just, "Harry kills Voldemort." While this simple ending should be sufficient, it isn't. After bringing up such ruminations as Deathly Hallows does, the ending feels as if Rowling has popped up behind you and said "gotcha, it's a children's book after all!" The reader feels cheated and is left hanging. The epilogue does nothing to alleviate this, as it could be summed up in one sentence, "and they lived happily ever after."

It is only after finishing Deathly Hallows that the reader discovers the last thing that sets it apart. When the book jacket is removed and placed flat so that the whole picture can be viewed, it's not surprising that it's depicting the moment just after Harry kills Voldemort, Harry's hand stretched aloft to catch Voldemort's wand. All the way on left and right ends of the picture, corresponding to the beginning and ending flaps of the book, are curtains.

So if these curtains, which suggest that this performance is really epic after all, are the closing ones, where are the opening curtains? Did Rowling really plan this artistic Easter egg so many years ago? In fact, she has, and similar examination of the first book shows the same curtains at the edges of the jacket.

Perhaps it is only now, as the curtain closes, that we can appreciate what has made the Harry Potter franchise so unbelievably successful. Somehow, Rowling has single handedly created an entire world close enough to our own to relate to, and yet different enough to serve as an escape. It's precisely because of her expertise that it's not until we turn the page after the last sentence "all was well" that we finally see the curtain.