Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
J K Rowling Bloomsbury, 768pp, £16.99
ISBN 0747569606
Bliss it is in this dawn to be alive - that is, provided you haven't been up until 1am getting a book the size of a dog's tombstone, lugging it home and reading the rest of the night. But let's pretend this is not a phenomenon, for although nothing like it has been known in publishing history, it is a novel, and must be scrutinised as fiction.
The boy wizard is now 15, hiding in the brutish Dursleys' wilting begonias and desperately trying to find out whether any signs of Voldemort's return have been noted by Muggle TV. He has shot up, become stroppier, and while following his bullying cousin Dudley (now, improbably, a boxer) gets attacked by Dementors, the life-sucking guards of the wizard prison Azkaban. Once again, magic has intruded upon suburban Surrey, this time to sinister effect. Harry saves them both, and is immediately threatened with expulsion from Hogwarts by the Ministry of Magic for using underage wand-work. In order to return, Harry must not only undergo trial by a wizard court but endure writing lines on his own bleeding flesh under the supervision of a revolting new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Both he and Professor Dumbledore are denounced as mad by the wizarding newspapers for insisting that Voldemort is back. Harry secretly begins training an army of other pupils against the Dark Side, and all but the formidable Professor McGonagall live in terror of the Hogwarts High Inquisitor, Professor Umbridge.
Several mysteries are solved in the fifth book: why, for instance, it is so essential for Harry to live at his appalling relations'; why Severus Snape hated his father so much; why some wizards become ghosts; and why, in particular, Voldemort tried to destroy Harry as a baby. There are wonderful twists, such as the information that, because old wizarding families intermarry, Harry's charming godfather, Sirius Black, is the nasty Malfoy's uncle. Each major character is deepened, not always to their best advantage. Harry enjoys (or rather, doesn't) his first proper kiss with Cho Chang. There are great jokes, such as a witch at the St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies appearing with a satsuma stuffed up her nostril after a family row on Christmas Day. One particularly admires the way Rowling refuses to sacrifice her other male Cinderella, Neville Longbottom, and instead invests him with dignity despite his lack of glamour. The character who gets killed off is, unlike Cedric in The Goblet of Fire, someone the reader does care about (as does Harry), though he is carefully made less attractive in the course of the story. Some insight into the reality of life at a co-educational boarding school, though not its unpleasant sexual bullying, at last seeps in. There is even, hallelujah, a Hogwarts pupil with a Jewish surname to join all those other ethnic minorities.
Once again, Rowling has written a book that, provided you can pick it up, can't be put down. The satire on the horrors of a school inspection, weak leadership and racial intolerance is splendidly pointed. There are thrills and spills galore. Yet the novel is also dismayingly flawed. We don't need the new, punkish witch Tonks; we don't need a Room of Requirements suddenly added to Hogwarts; or yet another pub at Hogsmeade village; or yet another McGuffin in the shape of a secret prophecy that foretells that either Harry or Voldemort must die. We know that by now, thanks. The beautiful cleverness and emotional depth of The Prisoner of Azkaban are absent, and what we get instead is perilously close to a gobbling Hollywood screenplay.
Most of all, one misses the comfort of the previous books. The phenomenal popularity of Rowling's novels is not solely attributable to the yoking of a boarding-school comedy with a tale of magic and suspense. Modern children (and many adults) live lives of such stress that we need the consolations of Harry's world as never before. Perhaps Rowling, now she is happy herself, has forgotten just how many millions still need her healing art. Bliss it is in this dawn to be alive, and to be young is very heaven: but those who have reached the end of the new novel will find themselves wishing, very hard, for a return of the hopeful innocence with which it was begun.
Amanda Craig's latest novel, Love in Idleness, is published this month by Little, Brown
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