Review: The Cursed Child

Holy Smokes but this review has taken all of time to write. Seriously, I cannot actually remember the last time I found it hard to put my feelings about a book into words. I mean I know I flail sometimes and I have kind of made the incoherent keysmash into an art form of my own (and I am eternally sorry for any and all posts that are basically just READ THE DAMN BOOK) but I hardly ever sit and just think ‘well then.’

Thing is, ‘well then’ is pretty much what I did think when I got to the end of The Cursed Child and now I don’t know quite what to do or say. WHAT SHALL I DO OR SAY?

I’m not going to talk about it lots. I could, and maybe I should. But I’m not going to, partly because see above and partly because I know some people haven’t read it yet and I don’t want to be SPOILER GIRL. I’m basically going to say that I have feelings and they’re mixed and a lot of that might be down to what Harry Potter means to me, and how despite myself my expectations for The Cursed Child were unrealistically high. So high though, you don’t even know. They were always going to be. Harry Potter owns a part of my soul, my love for this franchise knows no bounds. For all of time I have – for all of time I will – make grabby hands at anything new that JK Rowling and her cohorts want to throw at me. I will grab it all and I will want it all and I will devour it all, and I will expect it all to fill me with the same wonder that the books did the first time around.

And when it doesn’t, I will feel sad about it.

I think that’s perhaps what I’m feeling now. Sad. Because you see, I remember so well the last time a new Harry Potter book arrived on my lap. I remember Deathly Hallows release day so well. I remember how it was so very very worth the wait. I wanted to love The Cursed Child, believe me I did. & I read part one and made myself stop for the night because I didn’t want it to be over too fast – who knew when (if ever) I was going to get this again, I didn’t want to rush it. & it felt good to be back at Hogwarts, it did. So good. I giggled, and I rolled my eyes and I thought ‘yeah, of course he said that’ and I snorted at Draco and Harry and I was mildly irritated by Ginny and I felt strangely calm and settled and like as JKR promised me, Hogwarts was still there to welcome me home. It just….wasn’t entirely the Hogwarts I was expecting. 

& still, I don’t want to say too much, I don’t want to spoil and I don’t want to bias and to a point I don’t actually want to say anything negative about a part of something that I love so hard (writing this review is hard, dammit. I feel like a house elf.)

I’ll tell you a few things though and the main one is, is that it’s glaringly obvious that a JK Rowling piece of work this is not. Jo very kindly agreed to let somebody play in her sandbox and that’s fine because it’s nice to share your things, but it’s not Harry Potter in the way I know Harry Potter. It doesn’t feel to me to be Jo Rowling’s Harry Potter and I have feelings about that, because it kind of should be, you know? Jo’s Hogwarts is also my Hogwarts and this, this is something else. I didn’t want something else.

It was weird to read too, in some ways, perhaps because it was a script and not prose. We lost a lot there, a mon avis, because a lot of Harry Potter is in the storytelling; the world JKR built; in the way she used her words. So much of what made me fall in love with the whole damn thing in the first place was lost, and I missed it and it was so obvious to me that it wasn’t Rowling’s writing and that made me sad. You don’t get the same level of description in a script, the same level of detail. The detail is what made Harry Potter and without it, at the risk of sounding like a poor and broken record, it just wasn’t the same.

Also, there were flaws in the plot: things that really bugged me and things that felt too convenient and things that needed explaining and things that made me facepalm so hard and there were some pretty major issues with characterisation, such as (sometimes) Hermione (holy feminist issues batman do not let me get on that soapbox because I was a little bit ragey) and Ron (who albeit had some excellent lines) coming across like he was a caricature of himself.

& then there was pretty much everything about Harry as a parent. I felt like some key issues from the books had been conveniently cast aside in order to try to make the story work. Anyone else remember Sirius, and Remus and how thanks to them Harry sort of did have a father figure? Ok, good. Because all of that stuff, the Harry as a father stuff… actually, no. Let’s not. Don’t get me get on the Sirius Black train, it won’t be pretty.

Oh, and I missed people that I thought should have been there – where was Hagrid please? Where exactly was Hagrid. Perhaps Jen was right (and I don’t mind telling you that our live texting of this was a world away from our live texting of DH) and they just didn’t know how to stage him, ha, but still. WHERE WAS HAGRID???

It’s just….I was from the fanfic era you know? I read a lot of fanfiction back In The Day. A lot. And some of it was out of this world excellent. I read fix-it fic, which essentially is what this play was and whilst I was totally a Marauders fangirl, after Deathly Hallows I also read a fair amount of Next Gen fic and that’s kind of what this felt like to me. Next Gen Fix-It Fanfiction. I already knew this version of Albus and Scorpius because I’d met them – they felt like they’d been lifted straight from the internet.  (& if you want to tell me that Scorpius has a thing for Rose then sure, go right ahead, but that’s not the play I read.)

On the flip side, the Voldemort storyline made my skin crawl in the way I imagine it was supposed to and there was also a scene with Harry that ripped out my heart in a way that I was not prepared for, fuckety fuck and also ouch.

There was some excellent and very moving Snape stuff (good God is anything to do with Severus Snape ever not going to destroy me?) and, there was Scorpius. Oh, Scorpius Malfoy, how I love you. If JKR wanted to write an actual book about that kid, I would so totally be down for reading that thanks.

& despite my misgivings I can totally see that it would be pretty impressive on stage, and I really want to see it. I also loved the little bits of JKR that shone through – I mean look at Albus’s initials and tell me she hadn’t already sorted him when she wrote the epilogue. There are zero coincidences in Harry Potter and I have always loved Jo for that. Those little bits, the blink and you’’l miss it foreshadowing, the ‘fuck yes’ moments of realisation, the seemingly insignificant details that turn out to be epically important, the things. Those are what I love. This play was lacking in things. I WANT ALL THE THINGS. 

TL;DR: If you want to read some really excellent fan fiction then start here. For the love of God if you’re going to read The cursed Child because you’re a Harry Potter fan, then read this because wowzer.

If you want to read something that’s been for actual real published then read this and then read this because Rainbow Rowell is a genius. 

& you know what, read The Cursed Child. Let’s be honest, you’re a HP fan so you’re going to anyway. Just, just remember that it was never meant to be read like this, it was supposed to be seen and remember that JK Rowling didn’t write it, and don’t expect it to be like the books, and make your own mind up afterwards.

(Sad Jo is still sad about this whole damn thing.)

Review: Radio Silence

What if everything you set yourself up to be was wrong?
Frances has always been a study machine with one goal, elite university. Nothing will stand in her way; not friends, not a guilty secret – not even the person she is on the inside.
But when Frances meets Aled, the shy genius behind her favourite podcast, she discovers a new freedom. He unlocks the door to Real Frances and for the first time she experiences true friendship, unafraid to be herself. Then the podcast goes viral and the fragile trust between them is broken.
Caught between who she was and who she longs to be, Frances’ dreams come crashing down. Suffocating with guilt, she knows that she has to confront her past…
She has to confess why Carys disappeared…
Meanwhile at uni, Aled is alone, fighting even darker secrets.
It’s only by facing up to your fears that you can overcome them. And it’s only by being your true self that you can find happiness.
Frances is going to need every bit of courage she has.

I haven’t read Solitaire, Alice Oseman’s debut novel, although I did see and hear about it everywhere, enough that Radio Silence caught my eye anyway. Solitaire was a success. I wanted to know who Alice Oseman was. Obviously  I still don’t know that because you know, we haven’t actually met. I can tell you this much though: she can write; Radio Silence is funny and real and incredibly incredibly honest. It’s written by someone who understands her target market, who seems to really feel what it’s like to be university age right now. A quick Google tells me she is only 21 years old. It all makes sense now; Oseman is writing what she knows and she’s getting it absolutely right. If you want a book that’s relevant to the right now, then this is a book that you want to be reading. 

It’s a pretty interesting study of some fairly complex issues this book, which, well I do love a book with a message. It’s not preachy though and it doesn’t shove its message in your face, but it does make you say ‘oh yeah actually, that’s pretty damn accurate.’ It’s a really interesting look at what it’s like to be the nerdy kid, or the smart girl, an interesting look at how people like ‘study machine Frances Janvier’ are seen by their peers. It’s also a really awesome look at friendships and relationships and how people change and grow together and apart and I love the lack of romance. Seriously. Take this exchange between Frances and Aled who in most other books would be kissing face by the chapter eight:

 “‘And I’m platonically in love with you.’

‘That was literally the boy-girl version of ‘no homo’, but I appreciate the sentiment.'”

I love it. I love it that the focal point of this book, the key relationship is that of a friendship, a completely platonic relationship between a boy and a girl. AMAZING. There’s not even a hint of sexual tension; there’s no slow burn; there’s no instalove; there’s not a single YA Romance trope. There’s just a boy and a girl being best friends and being awesome. Give me all of that and more please. There’s also a m/m relationship that’s as real as they come, complete with ups and downs and messy emotional misunderstandings. I mean, if this book were less well-written it might feel as though it followed a check-list for diversity with the aforementioned m/m relationship, a handful of LGBT characters and 3 out of 4 characters being POC but it doesn’t read like that at all, what it reads like is an excellent, relevant (and I know I am overusing that word right now) accurate, honest story. None of these characters feel like ‘Token Gay,’ it feels like their sexuality, their skin colour just is – they’re well rounded and fully fleshed out and extremely relatable to. Excellent charaterisation really is excellent – you feel like you know these kids, like you’re under their skin. They’re just…vivid.  You want to be their friend. Damn, I want to be Alice Oseman’s friend. Hey Alice, wanna be pals?

It’s also an excellent look at the internet and fandom and the like, in a totally different way to Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl but no less excellent. The fandom in question is a podcast called Universe City which I believe to be inspired by Welcome to NightVale which I have heard of but never listened to (but now kind of want to) just like I want to listen to the bits of UC that are on YouTube. How awesome is that? I love it. I love that Universe City is a thing I can go and listen to because those parts of the book, the University City transcripts and the mystery surrounding February Friday (be still my heart omg) were pretty much my fave parts of the whole thing. So there’s the whole Universe City thing and its look at internet fame and fandom and all that jazz (super relevant because look at what the world looks like, it’s all Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, instagram Tumblr; it’s all about finding something you love and gushing over it online, that’s what being a young adult looks like right now, and I love how Oseman has used that to tell her story) there’s an excellent amount of diversity, there’s a look at the pressures of leaving college and deciding what to do next, especially when it’s always felt like your life is pre-planned, there’s a smart look at familial relationships, there’s minimal romance, and there’s Frances, who young adults all over the place are going to see themselves in; I’m almost 32 and I recognised myself in her. I mean this is a girl that’s got booksmarts but is still kind of awkward, that obsesses over YouTube channels and can fangirl like a pro, that sits around the house in PJ pants and hoodies eating pizza and who wants to be invited to go clubbing with the girls from school but hates it when she actually gets there and who puts more pressure on herself than is ever ever necessary. She’s perfectly flawed and I love her. 

All in all, this book is just excellent. The only flaw really, is that there was so much that was excellent that it felt a little busy sometimes and some things I would have liked to have been explored in a little more detail; some people I would have liked to have seen more of got left a little by the wayside. Minor niggle is minor though. & as a book that says it’s ok to not know who you are or what you want; it’s ok to spend your life wanting one thing and then realise it’s not the right fit after all, that it’s not all about what others expectations of you and that whatever you do, whoever you are, you’re ok, I think it’s really important. 

Radio Silence is a good book, and it’s a book that you don’t see that often: Oseman has identified a gap in her genre and she fills it perfectly. S’a book you should read, this one. GO AND DO JUST THAT