Why You Shouldn’t Outsource Your Book Franchise (Yet Another Review of the Cursed Child)

‘Papa, I don’t want to read this stupid book. I want more Enid Blytons.’

‘Try it out, all the kids are reading this. We’ll buy you the Enid Blytons as well’

‘Fine, but I won’t read it if I don’t like the first chapter.’

This is how I was introduced to Harry Potter. A forced purchase at the annual city book fair by my dad, who’d read that Harry Potter was all the rage in children’s literature. As promised, I did try it out but the modern British writing did not agree with my then limited reading skills. I meandered back into the world of Enid Blyton school stories only to revisit the Philosopher’s Stone on a rainy afternoon a month later. Once I had plodded beyond the first chapter, things got more interesting. By the time the book was over, I was a fan for life. Another 90s kid trapped in the magical web Rowling had weaved.

Fast forward seventeen years when I had the misfortune to read the script for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and the experience was as far removed from the average Harry Potter read as possible. More seasoned book critics than yours truly have brutally torn the script to shreds (metaphorically, at least) and I will refrain from launching into an exhaustive review in this post. However, as an ardent Harry Potter fan growing up in the early 2000s (arguably the most significant clique of HP fans, given that we spent the greater part of our eleventh birthdays waiting for an owl from Hogwarts), I can’t help but vent about how the new script is completely lacking in one the most crucial, yet underrated aspects of the original Potter saga. Feels.

Yes, the original series displayed a breadth and depth of emotion not often seen in mainstream children’s literature. We laughed at Ron’s goofiness, our hearts melted at Rowling’s subtle portrayal of Harry’s neglected childhood and smiled indulgently at Hermione’s incorrigible nerdiness. We knew that some kinds of magic transcend from Harry’s world to our own when Dumbledore assures Harry that the dead we have loved never truly leave us. From chuckles to goosebumps, suspense-induced anxiety to pathos-filled tears, Harry Potter readers have experienced it all through Rowling’s expert narrative. While most libraries classify the series as fantasy, to me the Harry Potter series defies literary stereotype. It is as much as British school story as it is a tale of magic; it pays tribute to eternal, unrequited love and celebrates staunch and true friendships.

When I picked up my copy of the Cursed Child (shout out to Flipkart.com for delivering the day it released), I expected to be transported back to the world I had grown up in (Of course, it was all happening inside my head, but why on earth should that mean that it was not real?). It was a day most of us never expected to see, given Rowling’s resolute statements that the Deathly Hallows would be her last literary venture into the Potter universe for the present. But with every page, my anticipation turned to disappointment. At first, I told myself to stop comparing the script format to the novels I was more used to. However, even after discounting for the play versus novel aspect, the Cursed Child was at best, a mediocre read. There was none of Rowling’s characteristic humour, skillful plot development, adept portrayal of characters or quintessentially British dialogue we know and love.

Being a die-hard Weasley fan, my biggest complaint is that Ron’s character had aged horribly. While Rowling had imparted just enough goofiness to Ronald Weasley’s character to render him endearing, yet maintained enough nerve and common sense to deem him a worthy member of the trio. The writing team of the Cursed Child saw fit to retain the goofiness, take it up several notches and do away with every other aspect of Ron’s character. Phew, feels good to get that out of my system and into the World Wide Web.

Coming back to the Cursed Child, it is clear the writers haven’t used their imagination at all. The Albus-Scorpius dynamics heavily borrow from several notable friendships from the books— Ron-Harry, Lily-Severus and James-Sirius, to name a few. The one merit in the plot is that it answers fan questions about the deeper implications of magical time travel. Otherwise, I really don’t want to use the ‘P’ word, but how many of us were forcibly reminded of Interstellar during the climatic blanket scene of the Cursed Child? Overall, the script was high on action and low on ‘feels’. There were no picturesque Hogsmeade scenes or surreptitious discussions in Herbology. Somehow, the writers managed to take the Harry Potter universe and twist it into a script that was stressful, disappointing and strongly smelling of mediocre fan-fiction.

I cannot help but wonder what Rowling would have made of the Cursed Child had it been a solo endeavour. I don’t pretend to be familiar with the dynamics of co-writing a script, but perhaps Ron would have been less annoying, we would have felt for the Albus-Scorpius friendship what we feel for the Harry-Ron-Hermione trio and the plot would have left us with a singular, overwhelming ‘WOW!’ rather than a multitude of critical, disappointing thoughts.

I felt the same when I read ‘Scarlett’ (Alexandra Ripley’s 1991 sequel to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind). ‘The land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.’ This quote from Mitchell’s original story touched a chord and will stay with me forever. I think of it when I visit my family home, and I will think of it when I build a house of my own someday. This, and the strife of the American Civil War, the petty jealousies of a Southern belle, the tragedy of a love story that never came to be remain etched in my memory. Ten years after reading the original and the sequel, I barely remember anything of the latter.

The same holds for Jane Austen’s Sanditon. Austen died before she could finish the book, and various completions and adaptations have been attempted since. Taking up an unfinished classic is a brave and commendable thing to do, but even the most faithful aficionado of the original author will fail to do justice to the latter’s writing style. The turn of speech, the twist of the plot, the minute details in description that stem from the author’s own life must and will be lost in any auxiliary attempt.

In the case of Gone With the Wind and Sanditon, Mitchell and Austen did not have much of a say in the matter of sequels and completions. But Rowling does. I strongly urge her to be discerning when it comes to sharing the task of rekindling the Potter magic through film, book or play. I had come to terms with the series coming to an end, and that bitter reality is more acceptable to me than seeing the world I love change beyond literary recognition. Please, take this bit of unwarranted and inexpert criticism from a die-hard fan of both yourself and Harry Potter. You may believe you are trusting you brainchild to good hands, but take it from me — if those hands are not your own they are not good enough to write about the Boy Who Lived.