Curses, Child!
Here we are, a week after I was supposed to have bought the Cursed Child and devoured it in one euphoric sitting. By now I should been well into the Joan Mitchell biog. I picked up from the library, even with time allowed to re-read favorite parts of CS.
Somehow, once I’d decided to postpone buying the book, I forgot to buy it all together. I forgot to write it down. It’s been true for quite some time now: If I don’t write a thing down, it doesn’t exist. I can’t say when I would’ve remembered had I not passed the wonderful Books of Wonder on 18th Street and seen Cursed Child in the window.
This was Wednesday. Lunchtime. I sat in the kitchen with some leftover pasta carbonara and open the book. For a few pages, it read more or less the way I thought it would, picking up the last chapter of Deathly Hallows. It was strange to see paragraphs winnowed into one-line bits of dialogue. Right, this was a script—a “Special Rehearsal Edition Script,” as the cover trumpets. (I could imagine the marketing meeting about the cover design. “Is there any other kind of script?” someone asked. “No.” The presenter, standing with a huge full-screen mockup. “It just sounds good. I mean, come on—it’s the eighth Harry Potter book! If that isn’t special, I don’t know what is.”)
But it wasn’t Deathly Hallows, in play form. Not for long. Page 10: Ron greets his niece Lily Potter with a…trick. Huh?
“RON: Are you aware of the Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes-certified nose-stealing breath?
ROSE: Mum! Dad’s doing that lame thing again.”
Lame is right. Why is Ron doing lame jokes? He was never funny, like George and Fred—not intentionally, anyway. Is this the hand of Jack Thorne, the playwright?
Anyway. We’re still in Hallows territory. Albus get on the Hogwarts Express, with Rose, Ron and Hermione’s daughter. They’re looking for somewhere to sit. Remember Harry’s first trip? Rose does. She reminds Albus that his dad and her parents met on that first train. To my dismay, Rose reveals herself to be a terrible snob from the get-go—she wants to find just the right people to sit with, the ones deserving of being friends with the children of Harry, Ron and Hermione. But Albus ends up wanting to sit with—
All right. I’m not going to give anything away. Just in case you find the first part more riveting than I did. I found I was perfectly capable of putting the book down after lunch, and not looking at it again until I was in bed. At which point I read only a few pages before my eyes grew heavy. I put the book down and fell asleep. No all-nighter for me!
Michiko—how could you steer me so wrong?
I’m sorely missing Rowling’s voice. And her world building. And character development. I wonder why she didn’t just write this as a novel?
Well. I need to finish it before I say anything more. I’m on page 94—about a third of the way through. I’m going to try to get a chunk read this weekend.
alexandra alger 