Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Reading Notes: Why I am not a Potter fan

(This post is part of the Once a Month Book Club link up over at A Permanent Flux. This month's theme is Harry Potter - "anything so long as it's Potterific".)

This month's theme in the Once a Month Book Club is Harry Potter, and I almost decided not to play. What could I, honestly, write that would meet the commandment that it be "Potterific"? I was stumped, and here is why:

I didn't really like the Harry Potter books all that much. I don't own them, have only read the first four to the end and half of book 5, and have only seen the first movie, and I don't remember much of it, to be honest.

Before you start telling me how wonderful Potter is, how seriously deluded I must be, let me tell you - I *tried* to love these books. I tried really hard. I quite enjoyed the first two books, actually; I thought the idea was a clever and vibrant riff on two of the great tropes of children's fiction, the school story and the magic story. I liked Harry and his friends. I thought the first book in particular had quite a Roald Dahl-ish feel about it, that sense of a resilient child's-eye view of magic and menace, humour and really grisly adult behaviour, that makes Dahl so everlastingly appealing to kids.

I have tried to pin down what it was about the Potter books that ended up feeling so blah to me. It wasn't easy, because these are not badly written books - Rowling is a better than competent writer with an engaging turn of phrase and a real gift for characterisation. I don't do well with prose that is turgid, flat, over-written or excessively descriptive (less telling! more showing and doing!) but I can't honestly say the Potter books are guilty of these sins. In the first two books in particular, the stories zip along, the dialogue is really well written, and the characters emerge (slowly, but it is kid's fiction - you're not going to get Madame Bovary style intricacy, and nor should you).

So if the books aren't badly written, what is my problem with them exactly?

I know it's not just a contrarian reaction to their popularity; I love the Hunger Games books passionately, for instance, and they are extremely popular. I consider popularity to be neither a recommendation nor a disincentive - some really great books are widely read and some really rubbish books are. It's not a useful filter, overall.

I don't think it's the school-story focus, although I'm willing to admit that may be part of it. With the short-lived exception of a 9-month crush on the Chalet School books when I was about 10, I never really took to school stories in a big way; as an older child and young teen, I was mostly reading sci fi, fantasy and crime fiction. Stories set in boarding schools didn't hugely appeal to me, and maybe they still don't.

I think, really, it's probably down to three things:

1. These books very quickly (in my opinion) started to suffer from the Too Many Characters and Too Many Sub-plots traps. As a reader, I can maintain interest in and connection to three, maybe four, main characters, with a suitably rich, but backgrounded, supporting cast. The more people I'm supposed to care about, the more side-stories I have to track, the harder I have to work, and the better the overall story has to be to justify it. I don't begrudge the effort when it's Tolkien, but Rowling, I would contend, is no Tolkien.

2. I really felt that the fourth book (which is noticeably fatter than its predecessors) showed a lighter editorial touch, and not to the book's benefit. Without having the slightest basis for this suspicion, I wondered if perhaps Rowling's increasing fame by that stage made her less vulnerable to editing. Whether that's so or not, I thought the fourth book was bloated, and it didn't inspire me to plunge ahead with any great enthusiasm.

3. I got tired of the master plot. This is what I call the X-files trap - collapsing under the weight of the expectations you've created, that nothing could ever really fulfill. It gets to the point that even if you Break All The Things, Reveal All the Shockingly Shocking Secret Businesses and Kill A Large Number of Sympathetic Characters Just to Show You Mean It, it's not enough. I understand that the final book did a bit of that, no doubt in an emotionally resonant way for those who had engaged fully with the characters and the story (ie not me).

Anyway, for better or worse, that's probably why I'm not a big Potter fan. There are certainly an ocean of worse books, I'm not claiming otherwise, but for me, these didn't ring my bell, and I can live with that.

13 comments:

  1. I would agree with most of your comments. I too enjoyed the 1st two books, and less as the series continued. I had never thought of the master plot concept, but I agree it is also why I stopped watching X-files.
    I did recently just read the entire series for work and I must say the last book is much better than the middle books.

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    1. You know, I have heard that about the last book. Maybe I should skip over 5 and 6 and just read 7!

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  2. I really loved them and I look forward to reading them with my kids when they are older...but I totally understand what you are saying. I did get a bit tired of the master plot too and I was probably a bit relieved when the series finished - it was time to wind it up. I am not a big fan of the films, the first few were OK but I haven't even seen the later ones - they messed with the plot too much.

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    1. I certainly don't remember being riveted by the one film I did see (the first? or second? not sure)!

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  3. I think I have to agree with you, though it was a bit the opposite for me... I ended up enjoying the last few books way more than the first few. I personally *don't* think Rawlings is a competent writer. She's a lucky one, big difference. She keyed into a market that was just waiting for something new and learned to write while writing those books. I DID like the way she evolved along with her audience. The books got less cheerful but then I am one for fairly dark and heavy reading sometimes. TOTALLY with you on the X-Files-y-ness of them. The big conspiracy and the multiple, complex storylines and subplots... that series could have ended in four books if she wanted it to.

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    1. YES it definitely could have. Or even in a tightly written trilogy. The Robert Jordan trap of endlessly extending series ... it's such a bane of sci fi / fantasy. Just once I want to read a great book in this genre that's a stand-alone, or a book & sequel, and THAT'S IT.

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  4. I loved my Potter journey, but I think only as I viewed them as children's fiction the whole way through, there was not that much expectation. What I found so disappointing though, was was the ending - the last chapter that Tied it all up in a nice neat bow did not sit well with me at all!

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    1. I must say I prefer partially open endings - some closure is good, but I like to be free to speculate about some aspects too. Neat bows are not my favourite :-)

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  5. ahh i loved my potter journey - purely because I had just arrived in London when potter mania had started :)

    I am not a twilight fan or a 50 shades of grey.

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    1. Twilight is another one I tried, determinedly, to like, and couldn't (I actually dislike it quite a bit more than Harry Potter, TBH). I found the first chapter of 50 Shades so awful that I couldn't muster up the will to press on :-)

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  6. I haven't read Harry Potter. I try to avoid books that get a lot of hype.
    Having said that I loved twilight, and I recently read the Hunger Games series and really enjoyed that too.
    Not going anywhere near 50 shades of gray

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    1. Isn't the Hunger Games just wonderful. I deliberately haven't reviewed it because I don't think I can be objective about it - it's one of those series that's become part of my personal canon, the Not To Be Messed With all-time favourites. Re 50 Shades - good call :-)

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  7. Thank you so much for writing this, and sorry i only just got around to reading it! Last week passed without my realizing, and I never got around to reading any Harry Potter anyway (I barely get to read for myself at the moment).

    Interestingly, I didn't start reading the books until the 4th one came out, or maybe it was just before the 5th one (that seems more correct, but my memory is fuzzy). I read all of them in 2.5 weeks. it was a rebirth in being interested in books, a pure, indulgent escape.

    I think it is the many characters and sub-stories that have made the films more problematic and less successful for me (I think I've seen them all). I can accept it in a book, as long as the story is told from the one perspective, it's when the narration switches around that I find stories problematic and hard to follow.

    I still intend to read all the books again. I'd love to be reading them with Miss 5 as I feel she would be more receptive to it than other, older books we have read (Alice in Wonderland is being read in a very sporadic fashion at the moment), but I do think she is too young for them still. Maybe, once life settles down again I will let you know how I go.

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