Yes, it is with mixed emotions that I review J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Why would I do such a thing, fifteen years after being released, and after millions of people have already read it? Well, for one, I like critiquing and it is the most recent book I read. Two, I think it's important, personally, to see what it is about this book that has so enchanted its readers (pun totally intended).
So, of course the book follows a young boy who thinks he's a muggle but really he's a wizard and his parents are dead and he goes to a big magical school and he's a bit of a prankster and he makes friends and finds out mysteries and wins games on broomsticks. Now that we got that out of the way...
The style of this book is PRO READER in every sense, as if offering up continual bounties with each page. The sentences are simple, light-hearted, and fairy tale-esque. The characters are archtypical, easily categorized. The plot is fun, easy to follow, and provides some sort of surprise each chapter. But most of all, the entire Harry Potter Universe is our own, simply amplified.
I think this is the real key. It's as if J.K. Rowling has taken the sensation we have when, every blue moon, we decide to buy a lottery ticket and bottled it up to sprinkle on the pages. We read the story of a lonely child longing to have a better life, and when he finds it, he discovers that every single childhood fantasy is real. We constantly ask ourselves, whether we know it or not, what if that was real? What if I could fly on broomsticks? This boy came from a "muggle" family, what if I'm a wizard too? In that sense, the story is not so much a "fantasy" as it is an "augmented reality." Obviously, there is a bit of this in every fantasy, but here we don't have to start off accepting a new world or new behaviors or new circumstances. Yes there are trolls and ghosts, but we know what trolls and ghosts and unicorns are. But even more, we know what it feels like to be in the first day of class, yet this book takes that feeling and throws in the ability to become invisible and make fires appear from magic wands. The closeness to reality really makes this book approachable.
Having said that, I really felt there was a lack of character development. Characters didn't really grow on me as they simply kept reaffirming, more and more evidently, the stereotypes which they had been born into. Yes, we all had the genius girl classmate who was smarter than us and that upset us. And yes the characters grew and matured through the book, but that's not real character development. I didn't feel the change I just saw it. And unfortunately the times I did feel I was getting closer to characters, the methods used were plot driven. Hopefully this changes in her later books which, all in all, I'm excited to read.
I feel this book is also a great gateway book to other fantasies. I am dying to read the Lord of the Ring trilogy and compare writing styles (knowing full well they are leagues apart). It will be interesting to see how two very different authors were both able to entertain so many readers.
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