‘Cursed Child’ already a US best-seller

Harry Potter’s play script most pre-ordered book

NEW YORK, July 26, (RTRS): Harry Potter is casting a spell, again, over the publishing industry.

Nine years after the publication of the seventh and last book in the best-selling boy wizard series, preorders for the script of a new, soldout London play is the most pre-ordered book since 2007 in the United States, retail book sellers Barnes & Noble said on Monday.

“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” is billed as the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and is to be published at midnight on July 31. A script rather than a narrative novel, it is being published a day after the official opening of the London stage production of the same name.

The play, based on an idea by British author and Potter creator J.K. Rowling, is set 19 years after “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. It features a grown-up Potter “You Will Know Me”. Using the background of gymnastics, Abbott’s novel works well as a story about a family, a community, gossip, envy and blind ambition. This sharply plotted novel eschews overt violence, yet a sense of danger and menace flows throughout the story.

Katie and Eric Knox got their daughter, Devon, into gymnastics when she was 3 years old, following a horrific accident in which two of her toes were sheared off by a lawn mower. The sport, they were told, would “help with balance”. Devon quickly moves up the ranks, fearless on the vault table and now, at 15, possibly on track for the Olympics.

The training is grueling, practically around the clock, at the BelStars Gym with coach Teddy Belfour. For the Knoxes and other families, “gymnastics became the center, the mighty spine of everything.” Other parents are happy that Devon’s talents raise the gym’s reputation with reflected glory heaped on all the kids who attend. These same parents also resent Devon’s star status because their own children pale next to her.

The hit-and-run death of Ryan Beck, a young man dating the coach’s niece, threatens the insular world of the gym as jealousies and secrets emerge. The Knoxes’ determination to shield Devon has far-reaching ramifications.

Abbott illustrates the sacrifices that are often made to achieve a dream. The Knoxes are burdened by credit card debt and two mortgage payments, and their old cars constantly need repair. With the attention on Devon, their studious son Drew is