Who Dies in Harry Potter 7? Not Telling. Suddenly Doesn’t Matter . . .
Because, although I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last night, I’m much more shocked by something I just discovered while reading a review of Harry Potter 7 on Slate: children’s fantasy writer Lloyd Alexander died this past May. Somehow I missed hearing about it. He was 83, he had cancer, his wife died just a couple of weeks before him. Those are the bare facts. But they don’t capture the amazing scope of Alexander’s many novels.
The Chronicles of Prydain are my favorites, of course, but the Westmark Trilogy and some of his stand-alone novels are also worth reading and re-reading. The Washington Post’s obituary sums it up well.
Lloyd Alexander loved cats and violins, and had a habit of creating long-nosed characters one suspected were based on himself. (His long-nosed bard of Prydain so infused my childhood consciousness that, when I met my future husband, who has a rather lengthy schnoz himself, the very first words that popped into my head were, bizarrely, “Fflewddur Fflam.”)
As a child, I once wrote to Alexander, and the gracious reply I received is still among my treasures.
So, if you’re looking for something to read now that Harry Potter’s saga is finished, try the Bard of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. Many of his books are more satisfying than Rowling’s, anyway.
2 comments July 22nd, 2007