It all ends

Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock would know that the eighth and final Harry Potter movie was released last week. The press has covered it exhaustively, from both a "Thank |God it's over" standpoint to a "wow, it's all so brilliant, you simply must see it" perspective. I've always been a fan, first of the books and then of the films. I was out at the cinemas last Tuesday night, watching the Deathly Hallows Part 1 in preparation for the latest movie. I was hardly alone. I think it would be rare to find a full cinema for a movie that's about a year old, without it having become a cult classic. Even more rare would be the look of the audience.

I know there are certain films shown in certain cinemas where people go along to participate and dress up. The Westgarth used to run the Blues Brothers regularly; the Moonlight Cinema showings of Grease end up attracting a huge crowd of fans. Rocky Horror Picture Show, in particular, is known for audiences in costumes not normally seen on the streets. Harry Potter seems to be in the same category. The hard core fans were out and about on Tuesday night, complete with robes (or rather, academic gowns, most often), hats, wigs, brooms and scars. My friends and I all felt very old as we got our money's worth out of the ticket just in watching our fellow audience stream in. We certainly felt a strange combination of under-dressed and old, sitting in our tame street clothes. There again, we weren't going to be backing up our 9pm session of the old movie with the midnight first screening of the new one. Part of what made us feel old was the realisation that, before we became mature adults and had to turn up in a reasonable state for work on a regular basis, we would have been in the midnight show. Sure, we wouldn't have dressed up, but we would have been there.

There's been a whole lot written about how many of the fans have grown up with the characters. They started out the same age as Harry when they read the first book, and have reached adulthood and maturity at the same time as him. Little has been noted about the generation of fans who measure their adult life in comparison of Harry, as well. Close reading of the novels will show that Harry, the character, should be about my age. The headstone on his parents' grave puts their death in 1982, meaning he was born in 1981. He, like me, should fall into the awkward gap between Gen X and Gen Y, forever feeling just slightly out of place with those on either side of the generation gap. We're too young to have children in tow when we go to these films, but too old to feel comfortable walking through Crown Casino dressed up as a death eater. But at the same time, the Harry films, at least, have coincided with some big things in my own life.

The first Harry film came out when I was 21. I was legally an adult everywhere, and taking my first steps into a properly grown up world. It was the year that they kicked us out of university to go and work for a while, to learn just how much we didn't know about being architects. I used at least part of my year to take my first overseas trip without adults - actually, my first since a trip to New Zealand as a three year old. I saw the movie alone, sitting in a late afternoon session on a miserable day in Cork, Ireland. I felt like a complete outsider as I sat there waiting for the lights to go down - although in Ireland, like the UK, they never go down completely the way they do in Australia, so it felt even more strange. Then, for a couple of hours, I was transported to places that had suddenly taken on a new meaning for me, given that I'd just experienced the wonders of Kings Cross Station, of London for the first time. The sense of wonder Harry felt when he arrived at Hogwarts for the first time was nothing compared to the awe I felt as I stood in a London phone booth (this was in the dark ages, before Skype, before everybody travelled with a mobile phone, hell, before my parents had worked out how to email) and told Mum that I'd arrived safely. She still remembers how excited I sounded, even after not having slept for almost 36 hours. I may have been ten years older than the fictional character, but I could relate.

Since then, the world has grown increasingly dark for both the fictional wizards and the real life me. We aren't threatened by an evil dark lord, but the rise of terrorism following September 11, less than a month before I made that first trip, and the current financial woes have cast a shadow over the adulthood of my in-between generation. We emerged from childhood into a world where we were told we could have everything, much like Harry discovering the wizarding world. The first years of the rest of our lives were bright, with sudden explosions of doom, until about four years ago when the first rumblings began. Around the time of Order of the Phoenix, actually.

So here we are, and Harry has saved Hogwarts once and for all. There's no doubting now that I'm all growed up, even if I do still have a liking for kiddie tales. Here's hoping that the lighter side of the final scenes of Deathly Hallows Part 2 will presage brighter times ahead for my age group, a lighter future for the Gen Yers who went to so much trouble with their costumes. One can only hope.

Fanatic

I need to start this post by putting out a disclaimer. I am not usually one of those fans of things who goes around trying to either become a character from their favourite novel. I've never knowingly stalked anyone (there may have been a few coincidences in bumping into people, or accidentally googling them; these do not count, because the people involved were not famous). I've never read fan fiction, either. For those not in the know, that's the sort of thing where someone who is in love with a book will write their own version of it, changing things a little to bring about a different outcome, or creating entirely new scenarios for future works. I knew it existed, of course I did. I am, after all, a bit of a nerd about these things. But only a bit of a nerd. Like I said, I'd never read the stuff before. Before, of course, let's slip that I've read some of it now. And it's all the fault of the office temp.

When I arrived at work on Monday, I found a note on my desk. Scrawled on it were the words, "You have to Google Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.' It's FREAKIN AWESOME." (her caps). I'd heard her talking about various fan fic things before. Apparently in one version, Malfoy ends up with Hermione, which is what inspired her and her boyfriend to head along to the latest Harry movie dressed up as those characters. She's a big fan. But either way, I was a little wary. But it's been bucketing down so much this week and, in a moment of boredom at lunchtime, I checked it out. And now I'm hooked.

I'm sure it's just this particular version. And there are huge chunks of it that I just skim with my eyes slightly glazed; there's a whole lot of science in there. But it's like someone took Harry Potter and jumbled him up with Artemis Fowl, throwing in enough sci-fi and genuine science to get every nerd on the planet completely addicted. It turns out that a completely mad, despotic version of Harry, who is friends with Malfoy instead of Ron, and ends up in Ravenclaw, throws up a hugely entertaining novel (if you ignore the bits that go whizzing over your head). So I guess that means I'll be paying more attention to some of the suggestions made by the temp. But I don't care how good the fan fic is, I'm not dressing up. I've got to have some part of me that stays non-nerd. Or at least got to be able to pretend that. Yep, it's all about deniability. Harry Potter-Evans-Verres would understand, I'm sure.

A lot to answer for

I got very excited in New York over Christmas. There were many reasons for the excitement, but the one that made me stop in my tracks and walk a few steps back to check out a poster on a billboard was the discovery that the writers of The Nanny Diaries have finally gotten around to producing a sequel. This may be news to some - those in the UK, certainly, where it's not destined to land on shelves for another month or so - but to quite a few, it will be no shock. It was out in New York, it was out in Australia, and it made the journey back from Melbourne safely stowed in L's luggage until it was pounced on by me and read in a flash.

It's taken me a little while to digest what I read there. The book was lacking several things, not least of which was the fantastic alliteration of the Harvard Hottie - now he has a name, somewhat disappointingly, and is extremely absent for a large chunk of the book. The years have rolled by faster in Nanny's New York than in the real world, though, and suddenly Nanny is jaded, nostalgic and approaching an early mid-life crisis.

Gone also is the biting but disturbing critique of the wealthy society families. It's not nearly as surprising now to discover the truth behind something Cherry told Ponyboy in The Outsiders a few decades ago: It's rough all over. We've been presented with the dilemma of the rich child who has everything they want except the love and attention of their parents often enough to have become desensitised to it. And if we wanted to know what happens when the children grow up and reach high school, well, we've had Gossip Girl to instruct us on the difficulties of their lives. The parties, the clothes, the dash to spend cash - it's all too familiar.

The difference is that Kraus and Mclaughlin set their novel just as it was all revealed as a sham. They hint at the outcome before the story even begins, with a quote about Bernie Madoff's relationship with his sons. The makings of something a little more serious than the usual chick lit romp are already in place - even if they just re-use the framework from The Nanny Diaries. But somehow, it all falls flat.

Maybe it was me. I've read a whole lot more books with pink covers featuring cartoons of impossibly thin but beautifully dressed girls. I've seen Gossip Girl, and the episodes focusing on what happens when one of the rich bastards gets caught out. But whatever it is, somehow, Nanny just comes across as a little spineless and whiny as she hangs out with her former school mates, swans around town getting paid and enormous amount of cash to do very little, it seems, and fails to stand up for those who deserve it. Nanny, the great defender of the unloved, the champion of the children, has gotten all growed up and lost something in her years living abroad with her world-saving husband.

Still, for any who haven't read it yet, don't take my word for it. Read the follow up to the book that is credited with lifting the lid on Upper East Side Manhattan. Take a peek into the sort of lifestyle we can only dream about. Then follow it up with lashings of Gossip Girl; because really, who doesn't wish that they at least had the option to reject that lifestyle?

Top Quality

I've been reading chick lit again. Devouring it, in fact, ever since I got back from New York. The latest conquest is the I Heart... series by Lindsey Kelk. It's thrown up a couple of questions though. Like how you can stick a disclaimer at the front of a book claiming no real or intended resemblance to any real person, then proceed to rip off reality. Sure, sounds harsh, but let me explain why I'm saying this.

The basic premise of the first book in the series is that Angela Clark, a Brit, runs away to New York when she finds her fiance cheating on her. So far, so chick lit. You just know there's going to be romance, new friends, smiles, tears and general dramas waiting for her as she gets her life together in a new city. The catch is, for me, that her first friend is a girl called Jenny Lopez. There are a load of references to the fact that she's not "that" Jenny Lopez, but still. Then she hooks up with a guy called Tyler Moore. Just like Mary Tyler Moore, but without the Mary. So naming characters is clearly not the author's strong point. The next character with a full name is Alex Reid. Hmm, I'm thinking this might have been written around about the time that Katie Price split from Peter Andre. Sensing some topical naming going on. What was she doing, sitting with a gossip mag on her lap, and an old TV show on the box while she was writing? And given the James-Blake combination in the second book of the series, well, anyone for tennis?

But whatever. What really got to me, though, was her description of Alex's 'hipster' New York born and bred band, Stills. See, this one is also remarkably close to reality. There really is a New York based band called The Stills who, just like the band in the book, had been together for nine years when it was written and met in art school. So she dropped the "The" and stuck her incarnation of the then-current squeeze of a celebrity in the front of the band instead of the real life Canadian who is really their lead singer. Wow, that makes it all totally original, I guess.

See, I don't read these books for their original plotting; there is something comforting about knowing that the girl's life is going to get totally screwed up but, by the end of the 300-odd pages (because they're almost always about 300 pages long) she will have gotten it together, whether 'it' is her love life, her career, her friends, her family, or some combination of the above. It's nice to see someone who, other than their ability to both afford and fit into designer clothes whilst eating hearty meals (because, after all, size 12 involves having an arse of monstrous proportions in that world, right?), could, theoretically, be you. If the world was a little more perfect. But come on folks. You can have a genre specific novel without ripping off EVERYTHING from somewhere else. Use a little ingenuity, please. Otherwise those of us who enjoy reading books with caricatures of beautiful women carrying loads of shopping on the covers will never be able to raise our heads on the tube for fear of meeting the eyes of anyone else in the carriage. The judgement attached to the knowledge that there is no defence for our reading choices will chatter us forever and reading chick lit, like overindulging on chocolate, will become a guilty pleasure to be hidden. And those of us who attempt to write anything at all will turn green - not necessarily with envy, more along the lines what happens when the Incredible Hulk gets angry - at the thought of what HAS been published, while knowing our own manuscripts would never make it out of the slush pile.

So, in a plea to all the people who write and publish these books, some quality control, please. I know, they sell like hot cakes. But has the publishing world totally sold it's soul? Has editorial surrendered control of the presses to the marketing department? And can the next I Heart book hurry up and come out? Because I want to know how Angela's life is going to fall apart in Paris, and just how many hot men she is going to hook while dressing herself in designer clothes on a freelance writer's salary. And my own celeb-inspired novel? Well, as soon as I decide which Olsen twin to base a character on, it'll be in the mail to the nearest publisher.