When Rowling or anyone else adds to her original canon, I also can’t help feeling that it detracts from the singular accomplishment of executing those seven books she first dreamed up. The published Cursed Child script serves as a consolation prize to the millions of fans who will never experience the staged version. Although there’s now more Harry Potter to enjoy, not everyone will be able to enjoy it in its intended form.
HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD BOOK AUTHOR SERIES
As much as it’s the story of an unwanted boy destined to be one of the greatest wizards that ever lived, the series is also the story of a struggling single mom who became richer than the Queen. Salinger-hell, like Seinfeld-I wanted Rowling to leave her audience wanting more.Īnd herein lies the problem for me: even though Harry Potter is set in an enchanted land, the original stories were available to anyone who’d ever been neglected, depressed, pigeonholed, scared, or insecure. In my opinion, killing its title character would have catapulted the series into a rarefied, universally respected genre, far past the debate about whether the series constitutes “literature” or “children’s literature.” Like J.D. And unlike Stephen King-who publicly lobbied for Rowling to spare Harry’s life-I had wanted Harry to be a tragic hero. Long ago, I had fallen in love with the public image Rowling put forth when the books were first published: she was both a first-time female author who famously wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on scraps of paper and a storytelling savant, methodical and confident enough to plan a seven-part series-even as the first book was being rejected by publisher after publisher. Especially in the years following 9/11, Rowling’s words were both sobering and liberating-no amount of magic could stop the world from being a mess.Ĭursed Child, though, spurred mixed emotions. Finally, he witnesses senseless acts of violence and is forced to the front lines of an inherited war.
He learns there that power often corrupts, and life can be (literally) soul-sucking. Harry also encounters all kinds of race and class prejudices at Hogwarts. He is introduced to the wizarding world along with his readers together, we wrestle with a strange, new vocabulary of magical creatures, wizardly pursuits, and non-hocus-pocus-style spells ( Alohomora! Wingardium Leviosa!). Following the murder of his parents, Harry spends his formative years under the care of an abusive aunt and uncle. Though I’d previously shrugged off fantasy fiction, these books were different: rather than talking down to her young readers, the author instilled her series with dark themes.
I first encountered Rowling’s series as a 10-year-old in late 1998. alone hosted activities to coincide with the launch naturally, I was the 93rd person at my store to receive a copy. The New York Times reported that 5,000 bookstores and libraries in the U.S. Rowling but by playwright Jack Thorne-was released internationally as “the eighth Harry Potter story,” Barnes and Noble’s most pre-ordered title since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007. Hours later, its text-written not by J.K. This weekend, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child officially debuted on London’s West End.