BOOK REVIEW: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne

If you’re a fellow Potterhead, you’ve probably been waiting with bated breath to enter back into the magical world of Harry Potter. In the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows II movie premiere, J.K Rowling informed us fans that Hogwarts would always be there to welcome us home. And whilst revisiting Hogwarts over and over through the books and movies, with glassy nostalgic euphoria, is well and great, it’s something else entirely to finally be able to sink our teeth into a new book – a new story with these characters that we’ve grown up with; grown to know and love.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, for those who are unaware, is not exactly like the Harry Potter books that we’re accustomed to. Currently, the play is being performed at theatres in London. The script version, written by J.K. Rowling, along with John Tiffany and Jack Thorne is what was released worldwide on the 31^st of July. The story starts exactly where we were left off in the epilogue: Nineteen years later, with Albus Severus Potter waiting to board the Hogwarts express for the first time. The story follows Albus and his own adventures; while still heavily featuring the trio that we’ve all come to love.

It is refreshing to see these characters all grown up; dealing with the struggles of parenting, of adulthood. Ron is the humorous uncle running Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. Hermione, the “brightest witch of her age” is the minister for magic. Perhaps best of all, is the boy-who-lived, all grown up and working as the Head of Magical Law Enforcement. But it isn’t Harry’s debut as a Ministry worker that makes his grown-up character so fascinating. Rather, it’s that J.K. Rowling is finally exploring how Harry’s upbringing; or rather, lack of it, has affected his life, and continues to affect the life of his progeny.

The main plot of the play revolves around this theme as Harry, all grown up, attempts to navigate fatherhood with a troubled Albus. In his first year at Hogwarts, Albus’ worst fears are realised when he’s sorted into Slytherin. Alongside this, his blossoming friendship with Scorpius Malfoy seems to lose him points with his best friend, Rose Weasley, and he quickly begins to isolate himself from his family and friends. The first act of the play focuses mainly on this disconnect that forms between Albus and Harry. The more Harry attempts to connect with his son, the more the distance seems to grow. There is something very moving and real about Harry’s attempts at connecting with his son. The more he fails, the more desperate he becomes. Towards the end of the book, Harry admits, “I’m operating without wires here. Most people at least have a dad to base themselves on – and either try to be or try not to be. I’ve got nothing.” It’s a plea to his son to understand; but also to the audience about the state that his orphan childhood has left him in. While Harry Potter may have been the heroic boy who lived, who could face death in the forbidden forest, his life has left him with deep scars that he’s still trying to unearth and heal.

While I found the characters, whether old or new, fascinating, insightful and authentically relatable, the actual plot of the play felt lacklustre. Of course, a play is written for the stage; and it’s difficult to judge the book as such without having the privilege of seeing it performed. There’s a certain theatricality to it; a certain drama that I imagine translates wonderfully into a play. However, there are times throughout the play that this theatricality seems far too over the top. There are so many actions that characters take in this play that seem utterly unprompted and under-developed.

Moreover, so much of the plot feels like a deus ex machina. In a world of magic, it’s easy to suspend disbelief for a while and want to be taken away by the rules of that world. As a Potterhead, the rules of the world that J.K. Rowling has created are  ingrained into me. It’s easy for me to escape into the magic of Hogwarts. But the plot of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is too far-fetched at times to even be explained by its magic. The plot is also  contrived and jumps (literally) from place to place with almost every scene; explaining very little. Even when it does explain, these explanations feel lacklustre and tacked on. There is just so much happening in the play that it feels like all action and no explanation. Whereas the plots of the Harry Potter series always seemed well-crafted and nuanced; every action thought out and developed, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child seems to be exactly the opposite. While Rowling’s characters are absolutely profound, the main plot of the book just seems too contrived to work well with these characters. Not to mention that there are gaping plot holes throughout that cause me to doubt the feasibility of most of the action of the play.

Regardless, there were so many things that I did love about this book. There was a lot in there that Harry Potter fans will truly enjoy, especially the growth of the characters and relationships that we’ve already dealt with in the past seven books. One of these was how J.K. Rowling delved into the relationship between Harry and Draco. It had always been a problematic one, and certainly this book doesn’t see Harry and Draco suddenly put aside their differences. Instead, Rowling deals with the characters’ differences and similarities with surprising nuance, as both struggle with their roles as fathers when neither had particularly pleasant upbringings. In one scene, Harry tells Draco “we have both tried to give our sons not what they needed, but what we needed. We’ve been so busy trying to rewrite our own pasts, we’ve blighted their present.”

Ultimately, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is far from perfect. Perhaps the performed play manages to capture the book version much better than I could imagine. Perhaps not. That doesn’t mean I won’t be looking into travelling to London in the near future to see the play. On the whole, the insightful look into the lives of the adult characters, and Harry’s struggles with his upbringing and his newfound responsibilities as father is truly refreshing and handled wonderfully by Rowling. The main plot, however, is far from the carefully constructed magical stories that we’re used to. It leaves much to be desired.