Harry Potter And The Self-Hating Grownup Reader

Congratulations, New York Observer, you earn our Spoilsport Award with the awful and self-satisfied "Harry Potter and the End of Enchantment" by Mark Lotto, and not just because it reveals a vital plot points two-thirds down on the first page and then says "I will spoil this much," on the second. Nah, it's more because before even diving into plot Lotto spends eight paragraphs on analysis of why the books are so beloved that boils down to three things: (a) The boring details of wizard life are more interesting than the boring details of real life (aka "a better banality"; (b) there's some religion in there, and I'll namedrop to prove it; and (c) I've read the books — and maybe even liked some of them! — but honestly, I'm really smart, just like you. And I shall prove it by being gratuitously snarky and using words like "lycanthrope" where, you know, "werewolf" would happily have sufficed. Oh, and also, my review won't really make all that much sense.

I skimmed over the spoilers, but reading a few plot points does not a decent review — or a decent analysis — make. Lotto dismisses the first two books as "Roald Dahl for dumb kids" but liked the third and tolerated the fourth, and then tried to find the reason why Muggles of all ages love them so — any reason, that is, except for the books being, well, good. Here's one of the half-baked sentiments: We need an explanation more convincing than "entertainment value" for the many drinking-age-to-midlife-crisis readers cradling their copies of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows against the lurch of the subway. Their numbers prove that we never outgrow our desire to believe, or at least to have our disbeliefs suspended.

Sure, sure. And also, we're totally worshipping Harry as Jesus and finding redemption in the story of Snape. Or something. Until we realize that we're all just Muggles, because we totally didn't know that before. Or something. And also, once you've read the Harry Potter books you can never go back and read them again for the first time. Or something. We might have had something more cogent to say but that would require rereading the review, and, well, we've got something far more rich and readable and enjoyable and smart and exciting and thoughtful and insightful and good. It's called Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows.

Harry Potter and the End of Enchantment [NYO]