Before readers of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire return to the familiar setting of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, they are first given a glimpse of the gray areas to which the fourth Harry Potter book expands: the boundary worlds that span the nonmagic Muggle world and the magic world. True to her talent for providing examples and provoking comparative thinking by describing the parallels between the Muggle and the magic, Rowling shows us both of these boundary worlds in the first ten chapters (158 pages) of her mammoth 37-chapter (734-page) novel.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire opens in the village of Little Hangleton—a conservative Muggle town in rural England. We learn that the infamous villain of the Harry Potter books, Lord Voldemort ("He Who Shall Not Be Named"), is hiding out, regaining strength, and planning his return to...