Potter plagiarist strikes again! Not.

Review of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch" where reviewer Julie Myerson doesn't like the book (fair enough) because it is a "Harry Potter tribute novel" (WTF?).

I'm currently reading The Goldfinch (It's OK. It certainly has flaws, but I enjoy reading it.) and every parallel to HP that Myerson drags up falls under "oh, that is a somewhat similar situation, only playing out in a totally different way"*, which makes me think that Myerson familiarity with HP is something like "read the first book, seen bits and pieces of the movies".

OTOH, it did strike me how one could map Tartt's debut novel The Secret History (which Myerson liked) on the HP books. Lonely boy grows up with boring middle class Californian parents/muggles! He gets the opportunity to leave this behind and go to artsy New England college/magic boarding school! At the school there is lots of wacky faculty and students/lots of wacky faculty and students! Our hero makes (new) friends/(new friends and meets a charismatic but morally ambiguous professor/Dumbledore! Horrifying and wondrous things happen!/Horrifying and wondrous things happen!

The Secret History came out a couple of years before the first HP book, but I doubt Tartt will file a lawsuit against Rowling anytime soon. (Though it would be a magnificent train-wreck if she did.)

*Obviously, Tartt and Rowling DO have some influences in common, Charles Dickens being the most obvious.