|  J.
K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows;
illus. by Mary GrandPré
770 pp. Levine/Scholastic 7/07 ISBN
978-0-545-01022-1 $34.99
Library edition ISBN
978-0-545-02936-0 $39.99
(Intermediate, Middle School, High
School)
The wildly popular series ends with a bang as Harry Potter,
the Boy Who Lived, abandons the familiar haven of Hogwarts
to defeat Lord Voldemort once and for all — or so he
hopes. From a hair-raising escape at book’s beginning
to the monumental battle at its end that pits the Death Eaters
against the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore’s Army,
and numerous magical creatures (including an unlikely contingent
of house elves), Deathly Hallows breaks formula,
eschewing the schoolboy setup of the past for a straight-up
quest adventure devoid of Quidditch, detentions, and exams.
On the run, now-seventeen-year-old Harry, Ron, and Hermione
search out the Horcruxes, introduced in Book Six as the key
to Voldemort’s destruction. Meanwhile, Harry, distraught
over his mentor Dumbledore’s death, puzzles through
the former Hogwarts headmaster’s shady past and discovers
a new means of defeating Voldemort: the Deathly Hallows, three
legendary objects that together give their possessor power
over death.
As the book opens, Voldemort has begun to seize power in
a silent coup: with discrimination codified, step by step,
into law and critics swiftly “disappeared,” the
resulting society is a familiar dystopic nightmare —
and Hogwarts is no sanctuary. Rather, with the still-enigmatic
Snape installed as headmaster and several Death Eaters added
to the staff, it is a youth prison and indoctrination center.
Rowling pulls few punches in depicting this bleak landscape:
torture, if not graphically described, is implacably present,
and the body count climbs ever higher. Readers who grew up
with the series will appreciate how it has matured, but younger
newcomers may be overwhelmed by a level of violence and loss
that far surpasses all previous volumes.
Rowling obviously had a long eye for plotting: numerous minor
personalities emerge from the woodwork to fulfill past foreshadowing,
while others — Ron and Neville Longbottom, especially—finally
come into their own. As for Harry, the boy hero flirts with
darkness, casting Unforgivable curses with a feeling of “heady
control” and ominously tempted by the promise of power
that tainted Dumbledore. Ultimately, however, he is saved
by his capacity for love and self-sacrifice, and it is here
that Rowling’s message rings loud and clear. Harry is
consistently defined by his compassion; it can even be his
(temporary) downfall, as when his choice to disarm rather
than kill one of the enemy identifies him amid a cadre of
decoys. But compassion is the quality that allows Harry to
break the cycle of hatred between Muggle and wizard, house
elf and human, and even Gryffindor and Slytherin — and
the ripple effects of this achievement are incalculable.
Ravenous fans and higher-than-ever stakes aside, the book
has its flaws. Rowling still discounts the ability of her
audience to read between the lines and leaves no subtlety
to the imagination (to a righteously angry Hermione, “‘Yeah,’
said Ron sycophantically”); certain plot devices seem
like hasty additions to the magical rulebook; and the scenes
of conceptual exposition, particularly a plodding one that
bisects Harry and Voldemort’s final showdown, are poorly
integrated, rarely sustaining tension. Nevertheless, Rowling
fulfills the promise of earlier volumes, tying up loose threads,
deepening character complexities to match Harry’s evolving
recognition of life’s shades of gray, pulling out every
emotional stop, and leading her hero into adulthood while
still producing the most focused plot line and layered, heart-in-throat
climax of the series. (Snape plays his part, and rather than
resolving his character as pure good or pure evil, Rowling
allows him a full measure of both and the internal conflict
to match.) After all the adrenaline, an epilogue gently releases
readers, shining a brief nineteen-years-later light on the
aftermath for all involved that contains small, satisfying
echoes of Harry’s own first introduction to the wizarding
world.
It is unsettling to reach the end of a saga that attained
such heights of cultural saturation; there’s not enough
action or bittersweet resolution in the world to prepare us
for the finality of that last page turn, and readers will
always want one more chapter, one more story, before leaving
the universe of the book. Rowling gracefully acknowledges
this ambivalence. The opening scenes of Deathly Hallows
find Harry, for the last time inside the Dursleys’ house
at number four, Privet Drive, sifting through his belongings,
recalling past escapades, and wistfully bidding goodbye to
those who, like his parents and godfather, were lost to him.
Readers will share his feelings of nostalgia in this triumphant
farewell to the boy wizard. CLAIRE
E. GROSS
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