The Hindu Business Line : Dedicated to Rowling, `with impudent admiration'

J.K. Rowling is said to be `well into' the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series. And a world that has already bought 300 million copies of Rowling's books has been anxious ever since she announced there would be a few deaths in the story and that the hero would have to fight alone.

To save you from desperately agonising over the destiny that would eventually befall Harry Potter, here is Barry Trotter by Michael Gerber, from Orion (www.orionbooks.co.uk) .

`Shameless parodies,' the author would call the book; and it is `as unauthorised as it is unfortunate', though dedicated, among others, to Rowling, `with impudent admiration'.

Fun starts from the imprint page with `a message from the publisher'; it cautions that the book is Satanic! "It is poorly written, incredibly crass... produced as cheaply as possible, using highly toxic ink and substandard paper." Also, "Every corner has been cut, from eliminating every 500th word, to employing copy-editors fluent only in Spanish."

Fly to chapter one, on `the trouble with Muddles', where you'd enter the Hogwash School for Wizards, `the most famous school in the wizarding world', where Barry is the most famous student. Get past Brainless Bill who glides by, `dragging his cerebellum and spinal cord behind him like a child's pull-toy'. Yuck! But you may get `dive-bombed by a flock of pickpocketing bats lurking in the shadows' when approaching Bumblemore's office!

"Unlike wizard pipes, wizard cell phones were no better than the Muddle kind," writes Gerber in a chapter right `In the belly of the beast'. What of the phones? "You often had to be a pretzeltongue to decipher what somebody was saying." Barry crank-calls `970-WIZZ' and hears not `that familiar slightly harried Welsh-accented voice' (perhaps, from a call centre in India?) but `a sultry voice' saying `Hi, there'!

In `All a-bored', board a train - "a piebald conveyance that showed every year of its age, and smelled like no window on it had ever been opened."

On track, but you'd run into Brother Curtis, a monk who `seemed to hover slightly above his chair'.

He advises, "We must each of us follow our own path, and all of them are equally valid, even the dumb ones that lead to nowhere."

Such as the chapter that follows, titled `Nightmares can be extremely instructive'. You can say that of books too! Barry's glasses made him look freaky, do you know? "One eye was farsighted, the other near, which gave him one huge googly eye and one tiny, beady one."

If you are biting your nails a bit too hard, `Relax, it's later than you think,' as Gerber names chapter 16, sweetly. But things turn fiendish. "Valumart put his face right in Barry's, so close that his breath steamed up Barry's glasses." Phir kya hua? He says, "I'm going to extract every last dollar from you!"

Watch out! Valumart wants to churn out `scores of dumb TV shows, boring books, mindless video games'.

As a result, the customers out there "won't even be able to imagine life being any different." He tells Barry: "Pity the poor Muddles. Barry. Imagination is the only magic they have - and you're going to help me take it from them!"

Get muddled!

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in