Books like Emma Watson: The Biography

I almost didn’t read this book. My kids loved the Harry Potter books and movies, and the pixie image of Emma Watson on the cover with the slight twist to her mouth without forming a smile also reminds me of my daughter. But once I opened the covers and started reading so many references about “in later life” about a women less than half my age I started to cringe.Luckily it is such a light style of reading I didn’t take it too seriously and pushed through those first couple of chapters. Once the writer settled down from quoting other writers and seeming to be pushing his own way into the papparazzi mix, the story of this incredible young woman began to emerge in all its strength. Here is a girl who has grown up before our eyes. She has shown a strength and awareness beyond her years, and maintained her own space on the highest stage almost from the very beginning. Rather than falling under anyone else’s spell, or being too greatly shaped by them so that she would later have to time out to find her true self, Emma Watson seems to have held a strong sense of herself right from the beginning.She may not have always felt like she had that – and given the spotlight she has so often been under, it would be understandable that she occasionally got confused by some false shadows or reflections – but she has had the intelligence to question the process for herself throughout all she has been through.She has certainly become an admirable role model for other young women and girls, in being clear about what they will and will not accept. This is partly something which the role she has played as Hermione Granger has given her. For this she is thankful to writer J.K. Rowling. But there seems to have been a symbiosis between Watson and Rowling which may have brought out even more of what was begun in the early books, by the very nature of Watson herself. Her ability to give Rowling a greater insight into her own early self, through the way in which she portrayed the “character” written for her, in a sense has put meat on the bones for the character’s inner life to really become more of its own. The intersection of people’s lives is such that a greater story becomes possible through such mutual recognition. It is not merely a matter of finding “role models” in the stories of other people, but thee meeting of those people so you have an influence back upon them to give you more of what they have already offered, grows both even bigger.This is what the Harry Potter phenomenon has done. To believe it as only possible through and within that phenomenon would be to diminish the capacity of the people capable of bringing it to fruition. Those people will necessarily go on to other things taking all they are with them along the way.Emma Watson has already proved herself to be doing this at an age most people are only just starting to settle down into some sense of what they might be capable of. Watching the next phase of her life in film, fashion or Fair Trade enterprises will be something worth following in more than a armchair reader’s comfort. It is something that seems worthy of our own action to participate in.It almost seems tempting to begin thinking “what project could I suggest to this remarkable young woman to be part of her positive influence in the world?” Her humble approach makes it feel just possible that she might be interested if I can raise myself to offer a good enough suggestion.That is a life worth knowing about – one worth living.