A review of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: the eighth and absolutely last Harry Potter book
Finally got around to reading the latest installation in the Harry Potter saga – Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. You would think I would have a hard time spending all this time in… society and on the internet without anyone spoilering the book for me, but to be honest, it was a breeze. So, after having read it, I went online, to see what’s the talk about it, only to find out that the so-called “Cursed Child” is kinda cursed. Harry Potter fans, (because, let’s face it, who else would buy and read this book?) seem be quite unanimous in expressing their immense displeasure with the it. But is The Cursed Child really that bad?
I will risk everything by saying that no, it wasn’t? Was it the book all Potterheads have been waiting for? No, but all things considered, it was very much akin to previous books in terms of plot structure and familiar characters, places etc. Like in previous books, the danger has something to do with a particular dark wizard who must not be named. Like in previous books there is a sort of detective mystery to be solved. It begins, more or less, the night before the beginning of first term at Hogwarts, and all that. Somewhere in between start and finish, Harry, Ron and Hermione join forces to seek a solution… Therefore, structurally speaking, Cursed Child is not that different than its predecessors.
The Problem with the book is time (in more than one sense). 19 years have passed, and our beloved heroes are now around 40, and life isn’t fun, and you can’t very well make an omelet without breaking some eggs, or write a new book in a series without touching its basic materials. This is why when the story picks up, nearly two decades after the end of the seventh and final Harry Potter novel, the plot revolves mostly around Albus Severus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, the sons of Harry Potter and Ginni Weasley and Draco Malfoy and Astoria Greengrass. Characters we’ve known, loved and accompanied from their childhood.
The book is pretty much an enlarged version of the closing chapter of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows. It begins with that final scene, 19 years after the defeat of Voldemort and tells the story of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy’s sons. The two children, despite their fathers’ old rivalries become best friends.
One question which bothered me since it had been reported the “The Cursed Child” is going to come out in book form, is why have the 8th story in the form of a play? Books about movies don’t come out as scripts, do they? Story retellings of musicals don’t come out in the form of musical notes. And though Rowling reportedly wrote the story on which the play is based, she did not write the play. Why then is the 8th and the (currently) absolutely last story about Harry Potter and his friends, not in the form of a normal book? Why is the last book in the Rowling’s series not even written by Rowling? In that sense, it doesn’t take a wizard to understand why many fans around the world feel cheated, and are reluctant to accepting “The Cursed Child” into the Harry Potter canon. Would a book version of the story diminish the plays chances for success? Hardly likely. The very opposite is probably true.
Another thing that bothers me in the book is the question of romance and/or premarital sex. One of the regrettable aspects of the Harry Potter series, in my opinion is that the friends who met in their early adolescence, grew up to date and then marry each other – Harry Marrying Ginny and Ron marrying Hermione (a couple so poorly matched that even J.K. Rowling herself admitted it was a mistake and that the couple would have had to spend quite some time in counseling). You would think, therefore, that the progeny of the famous friends would fair at least slightly better than their parents. You know, get some action, and use their knowledge to do some truly magical “snogging”… or at least want to?
Instead, when one of the younger generation of Hogwarts students falls in love with another student, he dreams of “building a temple of love” and eventually marry her. Now I don’t know wizard biology, but if it is anything like muggle biology 14 year old boys may think many things about girls, and do many things, too. Marrying them, I’m (not very) sorry to say, is not one of them. And I get that school is a very important and influential time for wizards, but you would think a few years after they graduate, they will go on with their lives, go on to Wizarding College, travel the world, meet new people and do some crazy shit. Instead, if all they ever did through the generations is marry other students from the same school, and most likely from the same house, and considering that houses in the series tend to be rather hereditary… Well, let’s just say that there are some conditions even Madame Pomphrey won’t be able to cure.
