Disappointment Was: Deaths in DH WAS: Re: Dumbledore (but more Snape)

[Geoff Bannister]

No: HPFGUIDX 177470

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "allthecoolnamesgone" 
<allthecoolnamesgone at ...> wrote:
>
> --- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Cathy Drolet" <cldrolet@> 
> wrote:
> >
> > va32h said:
> > >>At some point we're just talking in circles...I'm glad you like the 
> > book, really.  I just don't, and the more I think about it, the more 
> > disappointed I am. <<

CathyD:
> > And that is my problem as well.  The further I get away from my 
> first reading (I have not even attempted to read it again....uggh) 
> the more disappointed I am and the more just bloody horrible it is.  
> I am glad I am not the only one to be suffering at the moment.  

> > In fact, I've mostly quit reading and posting to this list because 
> it just makes me more and more disappointed, frustrated, and angry 
> all the time.  

allthecoolnamesgone:
> It seems to be a common reaction. Perhaps we were all carried along 
> at first by the hype and the need to know the end. I was disappointed 
> at the end of the book and as others have said missed the 'catharsis' 
> chapter. But it's absence sent me on a search for it which was 
> eventually met by Newsgroups,Fan Fiction and other literature. It was 
> a painful process though which did leave me somewhat emotionally 
> disturbed for some weeks and that to seems to have been a common 
> reaction from reading others experiences. 

Geoff:
It's interesting but having had mixed feelings initially, I have now come 
down largely on the side of liking DH, having just completed my third 
reading.

Like allthecoolnamesgone, my first reading left me in a kind of limbo (an 
HP book reader's King's Cross?). But subsequent readings, taken very 
slowly have settled my views more.

I really only have two gripes about the structure of the ending. I said very 
early after the list reopened that I felt the epilogue was skimpy and 
unsatisfactory - a view to which I still hold. But like others, I have read 
fan fiction over the years and can occasionally pull up an alternative 
future to keep me content.

The second gripe is, as others have also commented on, is the lack of 
closure. For me, JKR ended GOF and HBP on an excellent note. 
Dumbledore's eulogy for Cedric - brief, poignant and also uplifting, 
ended the book brilliantly and Dumbledore's funeral in HBP gave everyone, 
readers and fictional characters alike, the opportunity to say goodbye 
properly.

I would have liked a longer ending to DH where the students and staff 
gathered for a memorial service of remembrance and maybe, although 
he would hate it, an acknowledgement of Harry's part in the outcome.
And possibly, no epilogue at all....