Most of the litcrit I've read about Harry Potter has been of the sort that makes me nod in agreement or realize that the author has explained something or made some connection that I almost saw myself. I don't say this to wave my own wand or anything; it's just that I'm trained in this close reading and reading for layers and symbols and junk and I've read the whole series umpty-dump times. I just mean it's hard to wow me with something about Harry. To interest me is easy; to impress me with the cohesion or thoroughness of an argument is slightly harder, but not much (assuming the work is good). But to wow me, to make me go, "OMG, how is this not a thing we are all talking about how how how?" is hard. Granger nearly did this to me with his discussion of literary alchemy in some of his previous books, but while that feels important and probably accurate, it also feels esoteric and, well, a little complicated. Not saying it doesn't sharply illuminate the books (it does), but it lacks that elegant, perfect simplicity that makes a theory about a text feel like a bolt from the blue. But he got me with this book and the theory herein, boy.

Here it is, in a nutshell: the HP series as a whole, and each book singly, operates as a cycle, with events paralleling each other in roughly an ABCDCBA structure. Each book has a central moment (often a chapter) around which the rest of the events of the book hinge, and in that moment, the book turns (this is the "D" in the formula) and proceeds back through the events and symbols in parallel to the beginning chapters. (I'll clarify here that each book has more than seven moments/events/chapters--I'm just giving you the idea with that "ABCDCBA".) So if you have seven chapters, chapter one parallels chapter seven, chapter two parallels chapter six, chapter three parallels chapter five, and chapter four is the hinge or turn. Granger demonstrates this with examples for each book, as well as for the series as a whole: Goblet is the turn, Stone parallels Hallows, Chamber parallels Prince, and Azkaban parallels Phoenix. Granger goes into all this in detail and discusses the power of this construction, its use in other literature, and why (beyond just: NEAT!) this is important. This is a structure I'm familiar with (I talked about it in my review of Cloud Atlas), but I did not pick up on it in HP. Anyone who's read HP even just once (and defo if multiple times) has noticed at least some of the foreshadowing. This theory is like foreshadowing to the nth, I'd say. It demonstrates not just that Rowling uses foreshadowing well, but that all her foreshadowed events come to pass in a pattern. It's completely fascinating. The next time I reread HP (after I finish my current reread), I'm going to read following the parallel chapters outlined in the charts Granger includes (the chapters aren't always exactly one-to-one; sometimes there are two chapters in the first half of the cycle to one in the second, and so on) to see if I really feel the theory holds water. I'll read HP1 first, first chapter, then last chapter, then second chapter, then penultimate chapter, and so on. Then HP7 in the same fashion, then HP2, then HP6, then HP3, then HP5, then HP4.

I recommend Granger's book to anyone interested in HP (though, unfortunately, again with the usual caveat lector for his stuff: there will be typos and the occasional actual error. smh) ( )

I’ve heard a lot about ring theory in relation to Harry Potter, so I was looking online to try to find some actual examples from the text. What I found was this book, which is an expanded transcription of a speech John Granger gave on Ring Composition.

Parts of this book bored me to tears. I was literally falling asleep as I was reading it, as it went a little more in depth with descriptions of ring theory and other things that pretty much went in one ear (er, eye?) and out the other. However, at only 164 pages (and $9.99. Good thing I had a gift card, and you can tell I was really curious about this ring theory information), I decided I might as well read the whole thing.

Once it actually got into the concrete examples from the book, I was really interested. You could tell that John Granger really did his research on this, and seeing it all in black and white really made me appreciate JK Rowling’s writing that much more. This whole book just really shows how well thought out the Harry Potter series is, which is probably one of the reasons I love it so much! If you’re interested in ring theory and how it relates to Harry Potter, this is definitely an interesting read, though I still think the $9.99 price tag is a little high.

This review is also posted on my blog, Mommy's Reading Break. ( )