  urlLink Guardian Unlimited Books | News | Rowling books 'for people with stunted imaginations' : "Writing in the New York Times, Byatt dismissed the latest instalment of the boy wizard's adventures as below par 'ersatz magic' which lacked the skill of the great children's writers and catered for readers with stunted imaginations.
The adventure became the fastest selling book of all time when it was published last month. But according to Byatt: 'Ms Rowling's magic world has no place for the numinous. It is written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons and the exaggerated (more exciting, not threatening) mirror-worlds of soaps, reality TV and celebrity gossip. ' She said children were understandably attracted to fantasies of escape and empowerment but the books lacked the 'compensating seriousness' of novelists such as Susan Cooper and JRR Tolkien. Byatt, best known for her novel Possession, said she believed adults had become fans because the books allowed them to regress into the comfort zone of childhood.
'Ms Rowling, I think, speaks to an adult generation, that hasn't known and doesn't care about mystery. They are inhabitants of urban jungles, not of the real wild,' Byatt said. 'They don't have the skills to tell ersatz magic from the real thing, for as children they daily invested the ersatz with what imagination they had. ' " 
