Book review: Harry Potter 4

I feel like I am more than ten years behind the rest of the world in discovering Harry Potter.  And I know there is probably not much need for me to say anything more about the series, since almost everyone else in the world has already either read the books or watched the movies (or both).  But, just coz I feel like it, I am going to continue to say a few words anyway, as I finish reading each book.  Each review here is just my immediate response after reading the books.  I am too lazy to do a Google search to find out what other people have said.

(Who knows, maybe in a few more years I will discover and write about Twilight … and then Hunger Games and Game of Thrones next decade.)

The first Harry Potter book is 223 pages [my book review is lost].  The second book is 251 pages and the third is317 pages.  Startlingly, the fourth book, The Goblet of Fire, comes in at a massive 636 pages.  It is as if the book has finally hit puberty, and has had a huge growth spurt.

The book’s content, along with its characters, has hit puberty, too.  The first three books, while getting progressively more mature, still retain a childhood innocence and simplicity to them.  But this fourth book is a much more mature read.  I am guessing I might have been 12 before I was reading books of a similar topical maturity.

(Mulan, who has now completed the third book entirely by herself, is satisfied with not continuing on to read the fourth book.  In her words, she will read the fourth book “after her eighth birthday.”  In my opinion, it probably shouldn’t be too soon after that birthday.  But she has surprised me before, so we will just wait and see.)

In this book, the wizarding world widens … well, slightly, anyway.  Instead of just being primarily an English thing, we are introduced to a more Europe-wide wizard community.  It is the year of the great sporting event, the Quidditch World Cup, and the final is between Ireland and Romania (England, of course, has had an embarrassing defeat!).  We also discover that there are other wizarding schools besides Hogwarts, with at least one in France and another Germanic one.  After the World Cup is over, the three schools get together to have their own “Triwizard” student wizarding competition, and it is this competition that dominates the story.  Each school has its own champion, as selected by the Goblet of Fire, and it is these champions who compete against each other throughout the school year in a series of tasks.

Once again, just like the first three books, the story is filled with plenty of mystery, as we slowly discover whodunit (who done what?, you ask), and a bit more about the history of Harry’s world.

Unlike the first three books, I did not see in this fourth book any single overriding theme.  But perhaps this, in itself, was the theme.  Maybe the theme is the discovery, on reaching adolescence, that the world is more complex than can be explained by a single theme or story moral.  Instead, there were several ideas coming out in different parts of the story.  Many of these ideas were criticising or commenting on aspects of modern society.

One repeated idea was a criticism of the media, and especially celebrity gossip columns.  This was clearly intended by the author as a little teaching opportunity to help her readers to be more sceptical of what they see and hear in the media.  The final few pages of the book was a laugh-out-loud moment, when the true nature of the gossip columnist, Rita Skeeter, was revealed.  This was a delicious little dig at the nature of gossip reporters.

Another repeated theme was the danger of procrastinating when one has a task.  It was again a little teaching moment from author to reader, on the need to start one’s tasks earlier rather than leave them to the last minute.

A third theme paralleled and satirised EU unification difficulties.  The Department of International Magical Co-operation produced lengthy reports on standardising cauldron thickness.

There were also some sensitive discussions of initial, clumsy, boy/girl attractions and interactions.  I think the author, once again, did a wonderful job of presenting the characters in a realistic way, complete with awkwardness and misunderstandings.  But unlike some teen novels, it wasn’t presented in a negative, embarrassing way.  Rather, it came across as a positive, encouraging, affirming and non-preachy piece of well-written, sensible advice for young teens.  There was a first formal dance, with the need to find and ask partners.  And then there was the clear difference in thinking between girls and boys on the formal event itself.  Harry and his friend, Ron, did what I remember myself doing at that age at forced-to-attend dances—they sat off to the side ignoring the girls and chatting together the whole time.  Their dates naturally got a bit huffy.

Finally, in this book we were confronted with the first, direct, death of a character.  In previous books we had learnt about people dying in the past (Harry’s parents, etc), but no one had actually died in the direct telling of the story, and with the consequent emotional heaviness.  All the action in those earlier books had been clearly written with some child-friendly protections in place.  But here, towards the end, one of the secondary characters dies directly, as part of the telling of the story.  A fair bit of what follows is how the characters deal with the death of someone they personally knew.

So, all-in-all, once again, some thought-provoking themes tied together by a cracking good read.  It is not a young child’s story, but anyone from tween upwards will appreciate, enjoy, and quite possibly even learn from this fourth Harry Potter story.

(Update: my review of the fifth book is here.)

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Note: Mulan has now finished Peter Pan, and has started What Katy Did.  I haven’t read any of the Katy Did books, but I recall hearing that they were good.

UPDATE 5/11/2016: Mulan read Harry Potter 4 several month ago (maybe around her ninth birthday), and enjoyed it a lot.  She is still satisfied not to read number 5 just yet.