vicki
07-19-2007, 02:12 PM
Michiko Kakutani reviews HP7 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/books/19potter.html?_r=1&oref=slogin). There are some spoilers here, folks.
J.K. Rowling's monumental, spellbinding epic, 10 years in the making, is deeply rooted in traditional literature and Hollywood sagas — from the Greek myths to Dickens and Tolkien to “Star Wars.” And true to its roots, it ends not with modernist, “Soprano”-esque equivocation, but with good old-fashioned closure: a big-screen, heart-racing, bone-chilling confrontation and an epilogue that clearly lays out people’s fates. Getting to the finish line is not seamless — the last part of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final book in the series, has some lumpy passages of exposition and a couple of clunky detours — but the overall conclusion and its determination of the main characters’ story lines possess a convincing inevitability that make some of the prepublication speculation seem curiously blinkered in retrospect.
Woweewoweewowee!
The publishers are hugely ticked that the Times reviewed the book before its release. I have mixed feelings about it, myself, but would have exploded if I'd tried not to read it, knowing it was sitting there, two clicks away.
J.K. Rowling's monumental, spellbinding epic, 10 years in the making, is deeply rooted in traditional literature and Hollywood sagas — from the Greek myths to Dickens and Tolkien to “Star Wars.” And true to its roots, it ends not with modernist, “Soprano”-esque equivocation, but with good old-fashioned closure: a big-screen, heart-racing, bone-chilling confrontation and an epilogue that clearly lays out people’s fates. Getting to the finish line is not seamless — the last part of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final book in the series, has some lumpy passages of exposition and a couple of clunky detours — but the overall conclusion and its determination of the main characters’ story lines possess a convincing inevitability that make some of the prepublication speculation seem curiously blinkered in retrospect.
Woweewoweewowee!
The publishers are hugely ticked that the Times reviewed the book before its release. I have mixed feelings about it, myself, but would have exploded if I'd tried not to read it, knowing it was sitting there, two clicks away.