BOOK REVIEW - MICHAEL GERBER - BARRY TROTTER AND THE DEAD HORSE 2004 Gollancz Press. The third Barry Trotter
parody book in a series of shameless parodies of the J. K. Rowling Harry Potter series, done on the style of the Harvard Lampoon Bored Of The Rings books. Though not consistently funny, many jokes do cause the reader to laugh out loud. The book is clearly modelled on the fifth Potter book, The Order Of The Phoenix. Some jokes are just silly alternative names for characters and places in the Potter books. Hogworts becomes Hogwash. Voldermort becomes Valuemart. Dumbledore becomes Bumblemore, etc. Barry is not a teenager in the book, but a man in his thirties trapped in the body of a teenager – a claim for which he is tricked into seeing a clearly insane psychiatrist, Dr. Ritalin, who wears monocles in both eyes, and talks German when he gets angry to exaggerate his neo-Nazi nature. That he is actually Valuemart in disguise is no real surprise. Barry is a sex crazed character, and the school of Wizardry and Witchcrap takes extreme steps to stop him seducing the other students. He daren’t undress near one, as he will set alarms off that will bring the teachers down on him and get him expelled. Besides, the new defence against the Dark arts, or Dork arts as they are here, is a lawyer, who shows that a lawsuit can do more damage than retaliatory magic. Barry falls for a girl he assumes to be a non-magician, and he starts to become more respectable. He starts writing soppy poems for her and there is a very
funny interlude when he gets his friend Luna Lovecraft (who has a pet Cthulhu monster) to write one for him, and she writes the Necromonicon as a romantic love poem. It’s shame she isn’t used more in the book. When Barry accidentally sends his girlfriend to Hades, his shrink convinces him that he will have to die to bring her home. Can Barry therefore escape from Hell itself and save the day? The author gets the balance of excitement and comedy out of sync at times but there is enough genuine inventive comedy and genuinely fun characters to keep the reader gripped throughout. Arthur Chappell
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