Back to Privet Drive: The Harry Potter Experience

The cupboard under the stairs

As I mentioned in last weekend's Showcase Sunday, I recently visited the Warner Brothers' Studio Tour, or the Harry Potter Experience (or, as my friends and I have been referring to it, "Harry Potter World", because it really is a world of Potter-tastic stuff). Eleven of us drove down to Watford for the afternoon after booking tickets a couple of months ago, and although I was prepared for it to be good, I wasn't expecting it to be quite as awesome as it turned out!

We got to walk through the Great Hall (sadly without that enchanted ceiling...), which had two of the four tables in it, and seems a lot smaller in real life! It was a great start to the tour, and the little details were fun to spot, such as the house points counter up on the dais (Gryffindor were way out in front). They had some of the original costumes, including the huge costume that Robbie Coltrane wore as Hagrid. It was news to me that he had a (taller) body double at times, and a robotic Hagrid head does some of the scenes, rather than Coltrane - I had genuinely never noticed that, so it'll be interesting to see if I can spot it now...

The rest of the tour was self-guided, and there was so much to see that it seemed almost impossible to take everything in, no matter how many ways you tried to look at once. There were some unexpected bits that I really enjoyed seeing, like five versions of the same outfit that Harry wears, in various stages of distress, and plenty of original sets: the Gryffindor common room, the boys' dormitory, Dumbledore's office, Hagrid's hut, and the Burrow (or, as the French girls behind me yelled gleefully, "la maison de Weasley!"). I really liked Dumbledore's office (where apparently the books are actually recovered phone books), and the Burrow had the magical iron and the magical knitting, all going on while no one was home.

One thing I was really excited to see were the green tiled fireplaces from the Ministry of Magic - I always loved how that was brought to life on screen. A weird little thing, but still one of my favourites, was a pile of letters like the ones used in the scene where Hogwarts writes to Harry care of his cupboard under the stairs, to tell him that he's a wizard.

That part of the books - the Muggle world at the beginning of each one, but particularly in the first book - is one of my favourite aspects of the series. I don't think you can beat the scenes where Harry finds out he's a wizard. Nothing makes me feel more like a kid than that. So I was also really happy to see the exterior set of 4 Privet Drive - not that it looks that different from the house I grew up in, or loads like them, but it was still interesting to see it.

We also saw the Knight Bus, the Hogwarts bridge, the Potters' cottage, and Tom Riddle's grave, which was in an outside section. I thought the tour was over at this point, but there was quite a lot more to see. There was a room dedicated to the special effects and how a lot of the non-human characters were made and animated: Dobby, the goblins, Buckbeak, and the dragons. They had parts of the basilisk (eek) and the Aragog model, which was suitably disturbing.

And then... Diagon Alley! Again, a little smaller than expected, but absolutely fantastic to get to walk down in and see all the shop fronts, including the Weasley's shop. As one of those early scenes I mentioned earlier, the first time Harry gets to see Diagon Alley is also one of my favourite bits of the book, so it was pretty exciting to get to do the same walk for the first time!

The scale model of Hogwarts was really (sorry) magical, and I spent quite a lot of time in that part - it was so well done. Although the whole experience is based around the films, it was easy to have the books in mind at the same time, because although a lot of stuff from the books was cut from the films, they stayed faithful in a lot of other ways. Seeing some of my favourite parts of the Harry Potter world come to life was definitely worth the trip - if you ever get chance to go, I'd definitely recommend it (broomstick riding and Butterbeer optional!).

It's made me want to re-read the Harry Potter books again - I last did it about four or five years ago, so it might be time to dig them all out again!

[All pictures are mine.]

Showcase Sunday #25

Showcase Sunday is hosted by Vicky at Books, Biscuits and Tea.

It's been a few weeks since I did a Showcase Sunday, so here are a couple of things I've picked up recently, and a few reviews!

BUT FIRST: Yesterday some of my friends and I went to the Harry Potter Experience at Warner Brothers Studios outside London! It was a lot of fun, and there was so much to look at - a lot more than I was expecting. It was quite overwhelming at times, trying to take it all in - there were lots of little details and things you could quite easily miss (for instance, I loved that they had the house points counter in the Great Hall, but totally missed the Black family tapestry later on!).

I will try and write a full post on it sometime soon (and I am thinking about a HP re-read if anyone is interested in joining me over the summer), but I thought I'd post a couple of pictures here:

4 Privet Drive (ext.)

Diagon Alley

Hogwarts scale model

Highlights: Walking down Diagon Alley (a lot smaller than I expected!), seeing the complete model of Hogwarts, the exterior of 4 Privet Drive, walking across the Hogwarts bridge, and the Gryffindor common room / boys' dormitory sets - including the jumpers knitted by Mrs Weasley for Harry and Ron in the first film. :)

Anyway, on to the books...

Library

A couple of weeks ago I picked up The Dinner by Herman Koch, a Dutch novel that I reserved a while ago. I read this within a couple of days (short chapters = excellent for train commute!), and thought it was excellent. Highly recommended - review here! (This also counts for my 2013 Translation Challenge, run by Ellie, which I am having a lot of fun with.)

Netgalley

I received an eARC of Confessions of An Almost Girlfriend by Louise Rozett - thanks to MiraInk/Harlequin UK. I have started reading this on my Kindle to and from work, and am really enjoying it so far.

Recent reviews

The Hidden Child - Camilla Läckberg (7.5/10) - Swedish crime novel with some realistic domestic subplots.

Steal My Sunshine - Emily Gale (7/10) - New contemporary Australian YA with some interesting historical elements as part of the backstory.

It's Different for Girls - Jo Brand (5.5/10) - Funny novel about growing up as a teenage girl in 70s Hastings.

A Hat Full of Sky - Terry Pratchett (6/10) - The return of Tiffany Aching, as she learns how to be a witch (and why it's not quite as glamorous as she thought).

(After reading Steal My Sunshine, I wanted to find out more about the laundries that girls like Essie were sent to, so last night I ended up watching The Magdalene Sisters, a 2002 film made with Irish/Scottish backing and documenting what life in these laundries was like. Recommended.)

Review: The Dinner, Herman Koch

The Dinner

Herman Koch

Atlantic Books, 2012 (2009)

Translated from the Dutch by Sam Garrett

Goodreads

A summer's evening in Amsterdam and two couples meet at a fashionable restaurant. Between mouthfuls of food and over the polite scrapings of cutlery, the conversation remains a gentle hum of polite discourse - the banality of work, the triviality of holidays. But behind the empty words, terrible things need to be said, and with every forced smile and every new course, the knives are being sharpened.

Each couple has a fifteen year old son. The two boys are united by their accountability for a single horrific act; an act that has triggered a police investigation and shattered the comfortable insulated worlds of their families. As the dinner reaches its culinary climax, the conversation finally touches on their children, and as civility and friendship disintegrates, each couple show just how far they are prepared to go to protect those they love.

The Dinner takes place over the numerous courses of one dinner, one evening in Amsterdam. Paul, his wife Claire, his politician brother Serge and Serge's wife Babette meet at an exclusive restaurant. Ostensibly, the meal is a pleasant evening out between two couples, yet under the surface a horrific event lingers, boiling over just as dessert arrives.

As you might expect from a novel based entirely around one dinner, there is a lot of detail and a lot of insight into the minutiae of the lives of the Lohman family, particularly Paul, from whose perspective the dinner is viewed. The opening few chapters were biting and funny and razor sharp in their dismantling of people's public facades and secret intentions, and it was easy to see things from Paul's point of view as he observes the power games that he thinks his brother is currently playing with him.

These small observations and reflections on relationships and families and past events continue throughout the dinner, as the backgrounds of both Lohman families start to become clearer, and the horrific event is revealed. The Dinner is very clever, and rather insidious in its manipulation of the reader, as the parameters of reasonable behaviour start to shift before you really realise it.

The Dinner is quite difficult to talk about without giving too much away, but I highly recommend giving it a go. It's revelations about middle class privileges and the horrors that parents become in pursuit of their children's futures made this a compelling read, and one of my favourites of the year.

Overall rating: 9/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

This book counts towards my 2013 Translation Challenge.

Review: A Hat Full of Sky, Terry Pratchett

A Hat Full of Sky (Discworld #32) (Tiffany Aching #2)

Terry Pratchett

Doubleday, 2004

Goodreads

A real witch never casually steps out of her body, leaving it empty. Eleven-year-old Tiffany does. And there's something just waiting for a handy body to take over. Something ancient and horrible, which can't die...

Wise, witty and wonderful, A Hat Full of Sky is Terry Pratchett's second novel about Tiffany and the Wee Free Men - the rowdiest, toughest, smelliest bunch of fairies ever. They'll fight anything. But even they might not be enough to save Tiffany...

Tiffany Aching is an eleven year old witch, and for the first time ever she's leaving her home on the Chalk and heading for parts unknown. The Chalk is what Tiffany knows - it's where she feels safe, and it's where her Granny Aching lived and worked and watched over the land, until it was part of her and she was part of it. But now Granny Aching is gone, Tiffany is off to learn what it means to be a witch. Miss Tick takes Tiffany to stay with Miss Level, and what starts out as the more boring side of "hagglin'" - cutting toenails, making tea, giving people baths - soon turns a lot more sinister.

Tiffany is a wonderful character, and one I wish I'd have known when I was growing up. A Hat Full of Sky is full of excellent female characters - not infallible, but believable and strong and interesting. The book continues on from The Wee Free Men, and expands on one of the things I found most interesting in that novel: the lives of the witches. Witches in this world aren't there to be flashy and cast grand spells. Instead, they're there to offer medical attention and guidance and teaching. As Tiffany discovers, witchcraft is really just about offering help without expecting anything in return (except maybe a few biscuits).

Miss Level - who has the unusual condition of being one person in two bodies - was very funny, along with Oswald. Witches like Miss Level and Mistress Weatherwax have very little time for flashy witches with their ostentatious hats and cloaks and their fancy wands, and there are more than a few swipes at witches who are more interested in the jewellery than with helping people out. 

The main plot was less interesting, I found, even though it does allow for the return of the Nac Mac Feegle, a band of blue-skinned, red-haired pictsies whose aim is to help Tiffany fight... whatever it is she's fighting (they're not sure, but they'll give it a good kicking anyway). The book is full of funny lines and sly jokes - everything you would expect from Pratchett - and Tiffany's journey to discover the witch within herself was really the best aspect of the book for me. Perhaps worth it alone for Mistress Weatherwax's sage advice (and Rob Anybody's new-found skill of reading...).

Overall rating: 6/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

Review: It's Different For Girls, Jo Brand

It's Different For Girls

Jo Brand

Review, 2005

Goodreads

(Amusingly enough, my library copy has the word "sex" covered over with a small square of white paper.)

Hastings in the seventies is not the coolest place to be. As Rachel and Susan teeter on the brink of adolescence, they realise safety lies in numbers and the best chance of surviving their teens is to stick together. Their friendship protects them against the trials of parents, classmates, soggy chips, warm beer, aspiring guitar heroes, stoned hippies, men's clubs, derivative three-chord bands and emotional neediness and weediness.

But when Dave, sophisticated London art student and unattainable boyfriend, enters their lives, they discover that sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll aren't always everything they've dreamed of. And then punk music detonates the status quo and nothing will ever be the same again.

Jo Brand is one of my favourite comedians, so when I saw this in the library I snapped it up. It's Different For Girls focuses on Rachel and Susan, two teenage girls living in Hastings in the 70s. Rachel has just moved there from London, and the two girls become best friends (and sometimes best enemies), despite the fact that Susan's mum Terry thinks that Rachel's family are too stuck-up, and Rachel's mum Helen thinks Susan's family are common and to be avoided.

The social nuances of their friendship, and their disapproving families, were amusing and felt very genuine (I remember my mum passing judgement on some of my friends and their parents at times!). One of the strengths of the novel is the way it captures a particular period (70s Britain) and the experience of growing up in a small, slightly faded town. Hastings loses out to the glamour of Brighton and the somewhat forbidden appeal of London, and both girls seem a little bit disappointed with what their lives have to offer.

The book encompasses the period of a few years, from more benign fallings-out between the girls, accompanied by Rachel's feeling that while Susan is being felt up by boys under the pier, Rachel would rather be at home with a cup of tea, to later incidents of drinking and sex and discovering the joys of punk music. Doomed to always be the 'friend' next to pretty girl Susan, Rachel meets a boy and things all start to go right and wrong all at the same time.

The ups and downs of female friendship felt very real. There were some funny moments and lots of incisive observations, which I think comes from Brand's background as a comedian, but occasionally I felt like the writing fell a little bit flat, or that there was a bit too much 'tell' rather than 'show' when describing some of the characters and their thoughts. It often felt like it might work better written in the first person, as a more confessional account of being a teenage girl in a dull town in the 70s, as sometimes I felt a little bit distant from both girls.

I'm not sure I totally bought into the Dave storyline, although he did get a nice line - "I can't find anyone else like you anywhere". The novel seemed stronger when it focused on the girls, and Paul/Pauline was a nice addition quite late on in the book. The ending seemed a bit rushed and rather neat, and although the blurb promises punk music and lots of bands are mentioned (before they become hugely famous, like Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Sex Pistols) there's no real feeling of being immersed in any particular scene.

A good read, with some funny parts and some very dry observations, but ultimately it felt a little bit like something was missing.

Overall rating: 5.5/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

Review: Steal My Sunshine, Emily Gale

Steal My Sunshine

Emily Gale

Random House Australia, 2013

[New release: May 1st, 2013]

Goodreads

During a Melbourne heatwave, Hannah's family life begins to distort beyond her deepest fears. It's going to take more than a cool change to fix it, but how can a girl who lives in the shadows take on the task alone? Feeling powerless and invisible, Hannah seeks refuge in the two anarchists of her life: her wild best friend, Chloe, and her eccentric grandmother, Essie, who look like they know how life really works. But Hannah's loyalty to both is tested, first by her attraction to Chloe's older brother, and then by Essie's devastating secret that sheds new light on how the family has lost its way. Even if Hannah doesn't know what to believe in, she'd better start believing in herself. 

If I can liken Steal My Sunshine to any particular holiday-related chocolate product, then it'll have to be the good old Easter egg. What appears to be one story actually turns out to be two, one nestled inside the other and revealing a whole extra layer of history, family and reconciliation. On the surface, this novel is about Hannah - a typical, if somewhat shy, teenage girl living in Melbourne. She lives at home with her mum and dad and her older brother, Sam, who is at uni but still manages to infect the house with his stinky trainers and capacious appetite, a la every brother ever. Hannah also has a bubbly, popular best friend, Chloe, who works in her dad's bar and manages to seem cooler and more grown up that Hannah can ever hope to be. Hannah's home life isn't particularly brilliant - her brother is always sniping at her, her mum is perpetually angry and quite brittle with Hannah, and her dad is just in it for the quiet life. I really felt for Hannah in the first couple of chapters as she struggles to understand why she and her mum seem to be on the opposite sides of everything, while at the same time dealing with a best friend who is a little bit disdainful and dismissive of her.

So far, so ordinary - but then the second layer of the story begins to unfold, focusing on Hannah's grandmother Essie, who is agoraphobic and increasingly needs help with day-to-day things. She's a sparky old woman, always full of gin, and Hannah is always worried that Essie thinks she's somehow too boring and too safe, not like Essie herself. Hannah discovers that her grandmother has a secret, and over the rest of the book it is Essie's story that begins to unfold. Here Gale brings in a particular issue of Australian history, that of the use of laundries (quite often known as Magdalene Laundries, at least in the UK and Ireland) run by nuns, which were used to house teenage girls who got pregnant, or "fallen women", as they were known. (There's a Sydney Morning Herald article entitled "Bad Girls Do the Best Sheets" that I found on the same subject.) Girls would give birth and have their babies taken away and adopted by "respectable" couples, and while they were pregnant (and it wasn't quite clear, but I think afterwards as well, for some of them) they were required to work for free in these laundries, overseen by the nuns.

Through Essie, Hannah discovers a part of her family history that she didn't know about, and through this she  begins to see the bigger picture and where she fits into it. Essie's story was really interesting, and I enjoyed the historical element, which prompted me to go away and look up these laundries after finishing the novel. In between all of this, Hannah struggles with more typical teenage problems - tentative dating, her parents, having to speak in the school play, whether or not she even likes her best friend anymore - and the balance was just about right between the past and the present storylines, as Hannah tries to find more confidence in herself. A solid young adult read made much more powerful by the historical details that Gale chooses to include.

Overall rating: 7/10

Book source: ebook ARC received via Netgalley.

This book counts towards my Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013.

Review: The Hidden Child, Camilla Lackberg

The Hidden Child (Fjällbacka #5)

Camilla Läckberg

Translated from the Swedish by Tiina Nunnally

Harper, 2011 (2007)

Goodreads

Crime writer Erica Falck is shocked to discover a Nazi medal among her late mother's possessions. Haunted by a childhood of neglect, she resolves to dig deep into her family's past and finally uncover the reasons why.

Her enquiries lead her to the home of a retired history teacher. He was among her mother's circle of friends during the Second World War but her questions are met with bizarre and evasive answers. Two days later he meets a violent death. Detective Patrik Hedstrom, Erica's husband, is on paternity leave but soon becomes embroiled in the murder investigation. Who would kill so ruthlessly to bury secrets so old?

Reluctantly Erica must read her mother's wartime diaries. But within the pages is a painful revelation about Erica's past. Could what little knowledge she has be enough to endanger her husband and newborn baby? The dark past is coming to light, and no one will escape the truth of how they came to be...

There's a lot going on in The Hidden Child. On the one hand, it's a standard enough police procedural, following the investigation into the death of prominent local historian, Erik Frankel. Yet at the same time, there is a significant domestic element, focusing on crime writer Erica Falck and her husband Patrik Hedström, who is a policeman on the force investigating the Frankel case. Erica has been on maternity leave for a year with their daughter Maja, and now it's Patrik's turn to take his four months of paternity leave while Erica goes back to writing her new book. Patrik, however, is having more trouble that he thought adjusting to life as primary carer, and is desperate to get back to the police station to help out with the case. All of this causes friction between the couple, even as Erica finds herself being drawn into the case. Because that's another significant aspect of this book - Erica's discovery of her mother's wartime diaries, and the way in which that story ties in to the murder investigation in the present day.

All these strands are dealt with really well, alternating between short chapters that focus on Erica's mother and her friends, and the main thrust of the story, which is finding out who killed Erik Frankel, and what it might have to do with a well-known neo-Nazi organisation in Sweden. The domestic storylines are also interesting, and add an additional angle to the whole thing. Erica and Patrik seem realistic as a married couple - neither doe-eyed nor disillusioned, but trying to navigate their way through parenthood and life in general. Erica's sister, Anna, has a small subplot involving a new stepfamily and the difficulties that brings, and although it wasn't really integral to the plot, it fed into an overarching theme of family, responsibility, and the dangers of parents who don't do right by their children. The crime in The Hidden Child is interesting enough, but it is the exploration of these motivations - and the reverberations right up to the present day - that made this really stand out for me. Parental responsibility, and the consequences of parents who don't stand by their children, or fail to provide for them adequately - particularly emotionally - featured heavily here, and in the end the message is clear: the past matters, and makes us who we are.

Läckberg has written a rich and interesting crime novel that makes the effort to delve into the characters' lives, which makes the whole thing a very enjoyable and compelling read. Alongside the more grisly details, a little bit of warmth was injected through various minor characters - Mellberg's burgeoning relationship with the dog, Ernst, for example - and in fleshing out her characters beyond the usual socially inept cop and faceless station buddies, the author made this one of the best crime novels I've read for a while.

Overall rating: 7.5/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

This book counts towards my 2013 Translation Challenge.