Near the beginning of the fifth and latest installment of ''''Harry
Potter,'''' one of Harry''s former teachers performs
a ''''Disillusionment
Charm'''' on him. It''s a means of disguising his appearance and making
him less visible to prying eyes, but it also serves as a metaphor for
Harry''s loss, in this volume, of his boyish illusions and for his
teenage immersion into the ambiguities and perils of the grown-up
world. Already shorn of much of his innocence in his earlier
battles with Lord Voldemort, this 15-year-old wizard is compelled, in
''''The Order of the Phoenix,'''' to confront even more unsettling
revelations about his relationship with that evil lord, as well as some
uncomfortable truths about his own parents and the role that fate has
chosen him to play. This Harry Potter is less Prince Hal than a
budding Henry V; less the callow boy in ''''The Sword in the Stone'''' and
more of the young King Arthur. A considerably darker, more
psychological book than its predecessors, ''''Harry Potter and the Order
of the Phoenix'''' occupies the same emotional and storytelling place in
the Potter series as ''''The Empire Strikes Back'''' held in the first
''''Star Wars'''' trilogy. It provides a sort of fulcrum for the series,
marking Harry''s emergence from boyhood, and his newfound knowledge that
an ancient prophecy holds the secret to Voldemort''s obsession with him
and his family. Harry finds himself subject to a series of alarming, Kafkaesque dreams
-- filled with long corridors and closed doors -- while the grown-up
members of the Order of the Phoenix, a secret society organized by
Dumbledore to combat Lord Voldemort, find themselves battling
incompetence, denial and cover-ups by the Ministry of Magic. Dread
hovers over the novel, as everyone awaits the next move of He Who Must
Not Be Named and ponders the loyalties of others, like Ron''s brother
Percy; Sirius''s petulant house elf, Kreacher; and the perennially nasty
Potions professor, Snape.Although it takes a while for the gears of this immensely long novel to
mesh fully, the
author''s bravura storytelling skills and tirelessly
inventive imagination soon take over, braiding together the mundane and
the marvelous, the psychological and the allegorical with consummate
authority and ease. Even as Harry discovers that his teachers and
mentors are fallible, he must question how his own weaknesses -- anger,
pride and ambition -- may be leading him into Voldemort''s clutches.
Even as he tries to comprehend the terrible fallout that Voldemort''s
return could have on the world, he must search the past for answers as
to how to thwart him. And come to understand, as his beloved godfather,
Sirius, tells him, that the world ''''isn''t split into good people and
Death Eaters,'''' that there are more ambiguities to grown-up life than
he imagined.One of the things that has made the Potter books so appealing to
children and many adults is Ms. Rowling''s magpie ability to take
archetypes and plot points from myriad sources -- myths, fairy tales,
children''s classics and movies -- and alchemize them into something
new. The Potter novels are, at once, detective stories (with Harry and
his friends playing the roles of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, the
Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew all at the same time), moral fables,
coming-of-age chronicles and action adventure epics. Harry has been
written to embody a daunting gallery of associations (including Luke
Skywalker, Telemachus and even Jesus), while Voldemort vibrates with
the auras of Darth Vader, Hitler and Milton''s Satan, among others. Although
Voldemort, who is trying to get his clammy hands on a powerful new
weapon in this volume, can seem a bit cardboardy at times, like a
silent-movie villain, Ms. Rowling has made Harry such a flesh-and-blood
character that the reader has an instant sense of recognition. It''s as
if the boy next door had been miraculously transported from the Muggle
world we all know to a magical realm where dementors and thestrals
lurk, a world where people can pour their extra thoughts into a
''''Pensieve'''' or whisk themselves from one place to another with a
Portkey. As this volume, like its predecessors, attests, Ms.
Rowling has imagined this universe in such minute and clever detail
that we feel that we''ve been admitted to a looking-glass world as
palpable as Tolkien''s Middle Earth or L. Frank Baum''s Oz. The wizards,
witches and Muggles who live there share complicated, generations-old
relationships with one another and inhabit a place with traditions,
beliefs and a history all its own -- a Grimm place where the fantastic
and fabulous are routine, but also a place subject to all the
limitations and losses of our own mortal world.GET THIS BOOK FREE.BUY SELL RENT BOOKS ONLINE - ON MY BLOG.http://workfromhomedepot.blogspot.com/2008/01/review-books-summary-abstracts.html