Thoughts on finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I think you'd have to go back to the days of Dickens to match the anticipation for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

J.K. Rowling doesn't disappoint. I raced through the book on a beautiful mid-summer New York day, propelled forward by the desire to know but balanced, always, by the acute awareness as each page slipped by that there was that much less Harry Potter, ever, to read.

It's a great read, for any Harry Potter fan. A lot of things come back; many red herrings just float away; for me, the book matched my expectations and was one of the rare finales that didn't fall short.

Rowling must have increasingly felt like Potter himself as she wrote the finale, with all the pressure and huge expectations and legions of critics with their knives all sharpened ready (hoping?) to pounce.

And like him, she's true to who she is, and follows that through to the end, for better or for worse. And, in my mind, pulls it off--without magic, no less.

I was struck by how accurate some of the fan sites had been in their speculation about some important small items; and any close reader (or rereader) of the series will be rewarded with nods 'of course' throughout.

That's one of the great things about Rowling, she's internally and logically consistent; she's not making up things as she goes along, throwing up everything and the kitchen sink to dazzle and distract us--her world has core principles, and even when they call for hard choices she makes them and plays them out to their end.

And so how right--yet totally unexpected--the overall story was. Like the best explanations, that always seem so obvious and singular and elegant in hindsight. Of course it had to end the way it did--it makes sense, in every sense of the word, from plot to Rowling's style to our expectations and beliefs about how life plays out.

Like our fairy tales there's a connection to something that predates all of us, and Rowling follows the rules, even as she finds new ways to illuminate and play with them.

As Michicko Kakutani notes in her oddly once-over review, the story "could be Exhibit A in a Joseph Campbell survey of mythic archetypes."

Maybe that's why it felt so satisfying to close the thick tome.

And yet, of course, because although Rowling is no great shakes as a writer she's an amazing storyteller, finishing the book--the series!--leaves you with a certain emptiness.

I'd never thought I'd see the kind of outward passion for books Harry Potter has kindled; who'd have ever thought thousands of (creatively costumed!) kids and adults would pack a bookstore for the chance to, together, start reading a 759-page book?!

That the city of New York would shut down a city block so people could gather in celebration of a world that gushed from the pen of a former Scottish welfare mother (now certainly a queen)?!

I feel bad for people who haven't been reading the books, who haven't had a chance to experience the solitary wonders of Rowling's creation mixed with the communal passion of Harry Potter's fans, without whom the entire journey wouldn't have been nearly as much fun.

There's a diversity, an innocence, to Potter fans that I've never found in Trekkies and their ilk; maybe because it's so obviously a series for children that happens to stretch to create lots of room for adults, I've seen little of the weird obsessiveness that seems to me to mar other outwardly-similar events. There's plenty of room, for everyone to share their own version of Rowling's world.

It's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I think; there will be others along these lines, but now that we've experienced it, the next time can only be 'better' at the margins, it can never spark this type of authentic phenomenon, at least not in this genre.

And not, at least, for us--first love being what it is.

I'll leave for another day the parsing of the meaning of it all (the series definitely changed after 9/11, or to be more accurate grew to encompass more of the world as we see it now); the recounting of what was guessed and wasn't, the musings about why Rowling writes the way she does, my subjective list of what made sense and what was muddled.

What a great ride it's been; I'm sad to see it end, but happy for all the pleasures of the journey.

Image of Deathly Hallows cover found everywhere.