Snape: A Definitive Reading Paperback – June 28, 2016

I have been following Lorrie Kim's acute analyses of the characters of the Harry Potter series for fifteen years. Never has she failed to take my breath away with her ability to cut through the layers of Rowling's text to lay bare the crux of the characters' inner lives.In this book, she begins with Harry Potter novels, Pottermore additions to canon, published interviews and other writings of Rowling, and traces the evolution of Severus Snape from his humble beginnings to his heroic end.I tend to be an uncritical reader, accepting what the author gives me as fact without questioning. My acquaintance with the work of Lorrie Kim has taught me to be a bit more discerning now, when I read, but I will never attain the skill that seems to come to her as naturally as breathing.Kim provided me with many treasures of insight into the massive intellect of Severus Snape in this book. At the same time, she examines the origins of Snape's fractured personality: the childhood of poverty and neglect; the joy of finding a friend in Lily Evans; the constant dissonance of his underprivileged upbringing among the children of wealth and influence in Slytherin House; the unrelenting bullying he endured at the hands of the Marauders throughout his seven years at Hogwarts, and his full knowledge that Dumbledore was aware of much of it and still failed to protect him or punish James Potter, Sirius Black, and company; the trauma of coming face to face with Remus Lupin as a fully transformed werewolf; the devastation of the loss of his friendship with Lily; the decision, which he likely considered to be his only path forward, of taking the Dark Mark; the desolation of the death of Lily at the hands of Voldemort, whose decision to destroy baby Harry Potter was informed by the prophecy related to him by Snape; Snape’s pledge of service to Dumbledore, including protecting Lily's child, as penance for his terrible transgressions.Using these things as her springboard, Kim interweaves the machinations of Snape through the seven book series, showing us how the actions that were so heinous through Harry’s eyes were actually deeply plotted ways to teach Harry the things he needed to know to survive through the years of his childhood.There is much beauty in Kim’s exposition of Hogwarts’s Mysterious Potions Master. More than once sudden clarity in my grasp of Snape’s actions and words brought tears to my eyes.This book is a must-have for true scholars of the Harry Potter series. I would not be at all surprised to find it in the curriculum for a university course on the complexity of anti-heroes. Kim herself certainly did her homework in preparation for writing this book, as evidenced by her “Works Cited” page at the end of this book.Do you love Snape? You will love this book. Do you hate Snape? You will better understand who he was and the reasons for his actions. Are you on the fence? This book will help you make up your mind. Are you a Harry Potter scholar? You must have this master work in your library of reference books.Are you simply a Potter fan who cannot find enough material to feed the ravenous need to know more, to more deeply immerse yourself in the towering achievement that is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series? Find it here. You need this book in your library.

I'm no stranger to Lorrie's well-written, eye-opening analyses - reading some of her Potter essays has opened my eyes to patterns and themes in the books that I would never have been able to put into words myself. She's a veritable genius in exposing the unsaid. And the unsaid is exactly where Severus Snape lives: as the book posits, Snape is always the story, but he is the undercover story, the submerged story. He is the hidden story, multi-interpretable, deeply confusing at times, completely opaque in his motivations. Knowing Lorrie's strength in exposing the hidden, I bought her book on Snape with full enthusiasm, even though Snape is a character that I am not personally very drawn to. (I read him as a fellow teacher, and I find it immensely hard to forgive his abominable teaching practice.)The reason I gave the book five stars, rather than the four I would already have given it for its singing prose and razor-sharp insight, is that it genuinely gave me a new perspective on the HP series, and that is no mean feat considering I have been re-reading the series regularly for almost fifteen years. Lorrie's analyses hold up well, drawing on well-developed deductive reasoning about how Snape functions: if he did action a in situation x, it stands to reason he did action a in another similar situation, too. This is how, even when the text does not offer much support, Lorrie is able to interpret all of Snape's ostensibly contradictory action and bring it together into a cohesive reading.The subtlety of Snape's actions, his long-term strategy, his relationships to all those around him, the depth of his sacrifices - it all finally comes to the surface in this reading, without at any time denying or excusing the fact that he sometimes perpetrates terrible bigotry and cruelty on his students. I think Lorrie is right when she posits that Snape, at his core, is someone who craves to be seen for his true self, and that the fact that this was denied to him during his life was very hard to bear at times. Somehow it touched me deeply that in Lorrie's book, he finally gets what he needed: someone to really see him. He was seen by Lily as a child, but lived a life tormented by guilt over his responsibility in her death; he was seen by Dumbledore, who he had to kill; finally at the end of his life he was seen by Harry, and Harry named his son after him (in a much-reviled move, sadly). He died knowing that Harry would know his story. And now so do we, thanks to Lorrie.I will never love Snape. But I understand him a lot better after finishing this book, and that, in the case of Severus Snape, is probably far more valuable than loving him.

Me va gustando lo que voy leyendo. Definitivamente, si eres fan de HP, debes leer este libro

This is a wonderful in depth analysis of Snape's character and actions. It is a text book for those HP fans who want to dive in deeper. I have found wonderful insights into the character of the most complex personality of Rowling's series.

Really insightful book would recommend to anyone who is harry potter and snape fan

Bellissimo saggio, ben curato, sulla figura di Piton, il villain di Harry Potter, scritto da un'appassionata.Amico fuori dalle righe o nemico irriducibile? Vittima o aguzzino? Deus ex machina o insegnante (molto) riluttante? Le cose piu' importanti sono quelle che impariamo di persona, sembra voler dire.In questo saggio si parla dei film, ma soprattutto della saga letteraria.

Tank you so much for making this vome true.