Snape: A Definitive Reading by Lorrie Kim (spoilers for Harry Potter abound)

I actually purchased Snape: A Definitive Reading by Lorrie Kim on my Kindle. Most books I write about here I get from the public library because I'm that kind of person, but I actually couldn't find this one through the public or university library systems and it was only $4.99, so I ponied up the money.

In this book, Kim goes through each of the seven Harry Potter novels through the lens of Snape. She makes the claim that if you follow Snape through the novels, the real story is there.  Even when Snape doesn't appear on the actual pages (he's absent for a large part of the last novel, for example), what he's doing off the pages is just as important was what's happening on the pages. As someone who still is a bit on the fence about Snape and his role in the novels and is more than a little creeped out by his strange stalkerish fixation on a long-dead woman who rejected him when he was a teenager, I read this hoping to develop a bit more empathy for the man Snape became.

I think this book actually delivered on that hope.  Snape, particularly in the later novels of the series, was in an unwinnable position. He didn't dare to use his full strength to help students and members of the Order of the Phoenix for fear Voldemort would find out, particularly give Voldemort's skill at Legilimancy.  He was a double agent and I hadn't actually given much thought about what that would do to his mental status until it was repeatedly pointed on this book.

But the chapter that really swayed me the most on my reading of Snape's character came from Kim's evaluation of Snape in the Half-Blood Prince.

     "It's as if he's gone back in time. Slughorn is back. A young man
     takes the Dark Mark and will never be able to remove it. Potter
     wins at Quidditch and dates a redheaded girl. Snape's old Potions
     books resurfaces, and along with it, the Dark Magic spells he
     invented in his teens." (51% on my Kindle)

These parallels really spoke to me. If I had to go back and relive the worst years of  my life and what I see as the worst mistakes of my life, I might be a bit shirty like Snape is throughout most of the HP&THBP.  I would not be able to be the better person I hope I've become since high school. I would slip back into my old ways of defensiveness and a cloak of cynicism and sarcasm. If I were a double agent at the same time, who knows what would be happening in my brain and how that would manifest itself outwardly?

So, I think this book is a great read for a mega-HP fan. I don't think there's anything super new here if you're a thoughtful reader (and re-re-rereader), but it's interesting to see it all in one place.

Now, if only someone would write a defense of Dumbledore and his atrocious teaching methods.