Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (HP5)
#61 in my book challenge for the year. My husband and several other people I know started Harry Potter #6 (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) only to say, “I completely forget what happened in #5.” Forewarned, I read #5 in preparation for #6. #5 is the 766-page, brick-sized, potential bludgeoning weapon in the series, so this was not something I undertook lightly. Yet I blazed through the book in just a few days, when books less than half as long have taken me twice as long.
I know there are many out there who don’t like the Harry Potter books, and especially don’t like the hype that they’ve garnered. Fair enough. J.K. Rowling is a fair, not a great, writer of prose, and her books have some serious plot flaws, chief among them, in my opinion, the continued failure of Harry and his friends to confide in adults who have proved themselves trustworthy again and again. If Rowling were a bit more precise in plotting, she could come up with much better reasons why Harry & Co. couldn’t or wouldn’t confide.
There is much to these books’ credit, though. First, they’re getting people to read who might otherwise not. Second, they’ve brought notice and acceptability to that bastard stepchild genre of literature, fantasy. It’s not just for nerds anymore. Third, in spite of plot flaws they are hugely enjoyable, eminently readable tales. And finally, they’re full of engaging, sympathetic characters who have grown more complex over the course of the series. In all, I think the books do much more good than harm. I think detractors are welcome to their opinion, but there’s no need to go on about it.
This book once again escalates the darkness and complexity. Harry is a very believable angry young man. He is confused about his attraction to Cho Chang, he is angry that Dumbledore is keeping him in the dark and ignoring him, he is frustrated that people don’t believe him that Voldemort is back, and he is reckless in his interactions with the new defense against the dark arts professor, Dolores Umbridge, who has been sent from the ministry of magic to keep an eye on things at Hogwarts.
The central plot of the book is solid. There is a group called the Order of the Phoenix that has re-formed in order to fight Voldemort. But other subplots, even if they are integrated, still felt extraneous, such as Hermione’s ongoing attempts to free the house elves, and the mysterious thing that Hagrid is up to this book. I found the shenanigans of Fred and George Weasley to be very entertaining, and was thrilled when they seized control of their fate. Someone in the book who is important to Harry does die, but I felt curiously unmoved both times I’ve read this book by it. On the one hand, it seemed inevitable. On the other, perhaps I was so distracted by the rest of the 766 pages (in the English, Bloomsbury edition) that I couldn’t focus my attention.
This book has the same extremely aggravating flaw as all the books beforehand, which is that Harry is unreasonably stubborn about confiding in trustworthy adults, and much distress might have been avoided. Rowling is great at making the reader want to find out what happens next, but I deplore this contrived way that she manufactures the conflict at points.
I am working at a readable summary of this book for those who don’t wish to re-read it before tackling #6. I found it a quick and enjoyable read, though, and am glad to have undertaken it.
September 8th, 2005 at 8:48 am
the harry potter phenomenon notwithstanding, all other fantasy remains in the ghetto of nerd-dom