By:
J.K. Rowling
Reviewed by OFW editor: Katrina Monroe
Published: October 30, 2012
From the cover:
When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early-forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.
Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.
Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils… Pagford is not what it first seems.
And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity, and unexpected revelations?
The name JK Rowling is synonymous with the widely-read Harry Potter series; The Casual Vacancy is Rowling’s first novel written for adults. If, by writing this novel, Rowling wished to distance herself from the themes of hope and triumph over evil so blissfully strewn throughout the young adult series, then she succeeded beyond this reviewer’s imagination. With The Casual Vacancy, Rowling proved that her skills as an author are as versatile as they are imaginative.
As is expected of a Rowling novel, the cast of The Casual Vacancy is wide and varied, but closely connected to one another. Each character has his own unique tie to the town of Pagford which is the most dominating motivation for the characters' actions. Rowling gives the setting, and small town dynamic that accompanies it, its own characterization. Unique to The Casual Vacancy is that its protagonist, Barry Fairbrother, is dead within paragraphs of the novel’s opening. The only criticism I have is that two of the characters have similar sounding names and it was at times confusing, given the large cast, trying to determine which personality and background belonged to each character.
Generally speaking, the difficulty with a character-driven plot is that holding the reader in suspense takes more from the writer than an action-driven plot. But pitting your characters against each other, allowing them to create the tension on their own, solves this issue, like in The Casual Vacancy. With so many different personalities and motivations driving the central idea – that a council seat need be filled – several plot strands twist and snare each other driving up the suspense to a nearly edge-of-your-seat level. The reader can’t resist turning the page to see what these characters have come up with to sabotage and defame each other.
While the reader’s shoulder demon is cheering on these acts of sometimes violent cruelty, his shoulder angel’s heartstrings are tugged by the utterly helplessness of it all. The reader is asked to run the gamut of emotions, simultaneously feeling hatred, love, scorn, pity, and white-hot anger toward the stars of The Casual Vacancy. This, thankfully, is an easy task thanks to Rowling’s ability to create yet another “real” place with “real” people in the minds of her readers and is the most impressive aspect of this novel.
If you and I were to meet by happenstance, maybe in a Starbucks, moments after I’d closed the cover on A Casual Vacancy, I would’ve shoved it into your hands without a word. Hopefully you would read it and it would stand in your mind the way it will stand in mine.
When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early-forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.
Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.
Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils… Pagford is not what it first seems.
And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity, and unexpected revelations?
As is expected of a Rowling novel, the cast of The Casual Vacancy is wide and varied, but closely connected to one another. Each character has his own unique tie to the town of Pagford which is the most dominating motivation for the characters' actions. Rowling gives the setting, and small town dynamic that accompanies it, its own characterization. Unique to The Casual Vacancy is that its protagonist, Barry Fairbrother, is dead within paragraphs of the novel’s opening. The only criticism I have is that two of the characters have similar sounding names and it was at times confusing, given the large cast, trying to determine which personality and background belonged to each character.
Generally speaking, the difficulty with a character-driven plot is that holding the reader in suspense takes more from the writer than an action-driven plot. But pitting your characters against each other, allowing them to create the tension on their own, solves this issue, like in The Casual Vacancy. With so many different personalities and motivations driving the central idea – that a council seat need be filled – several plot strands twist and snare each other driving up the suspense to a nearly edge-of-your-seat level. The reader can’t resist turning the page to see what these characters have come up with to sabotage and defame each other.
While the reader’s shoulder demon is cheering on these acts of sometimes violent cruelty, his shoulder angel’s heartstrings are tugged by the utterly helplessness of it all. The reader is asked to run the gamut of emotions, simultaneously feeling hatred, love, scorn, pity, and white-hot anger toward the stars of The Casual Vacancy. This, thankfully, is an easy task thanks to Rowling’s ability to create yet another “real” place with “real” people in the minds of her readers and is the most impressive aspect of this novel.
If you and I were to meet by happenstance, maybe in a Starbucks, moments after I’d closed the cover on A Casual Vacancy, I would’ve shoved it into your hands without a word. Hopefully you would read it and it would stand in your mind the way it will stand in mine.