Time moves so quickly in today’s world that the end of the Harry Potter series, so vividly anticipated less than a year ago, has already relegated the books into artifact status. So I surprised myself a few weeks ago when, after finally watching and, to my surprise, liking the fifth Potter movie, I decided to reread the book.
Although many championed the fifth book as the best in the series, it was the one that impressed me the least. Maybe it was the length or the fact that I had just reread the first four or the mood I was in. For whatever reason, I thought Rowling was, for the first time, treading water.
So, perhaps with minimal expectations, I found a battered paperback copy and figured I’d skim through it, as much to see what the movie left out than anything else. And while the book was leisurely plotted, I was dumbfounded by how much better the book was the second time around and how much more rewarding it was to read it at a leisurely, rather than a breakneck, speed.
Doing so lets you once again marvel at the level of Rowling’s accomplishment. In a time where ADD is the norm, Rowling has pulled off a Dickensian tale, with plenty of humor, sex and death. Even more, she has balanced a healthy disrespect for authority, the need for self-sufficiency and the loneliness and burden of righteous ambition within the confines of a “children’s book.”
I have said it before and will say it again. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is the most sustained literary achievement of our lifetimes. The one thing I haven’t said before is that installment number five, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, may well be her masterpiece.
