Review: The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling

The release of J. K. Rowling's much anticipated novel since her beloved Harry Potter series has received a lot of press.  The Casual Vacancy refers to an empty seat on a council due to an unexpected resignation - in this case, a death.  The novel opens with the death of Barry Fairbrother (Rowling has always had an interest in metaphorical names...) a man whose politics didn't impress many but is painted throughout the novel as a genial upstart.  It is his seat on the parish council of the little town of Pagford in the English countryside that the parishioners are now squabbling over.  The central issue at stake is reassignment of the town's slums known as "The Fields" to Pagford's larger neighboring city Yarvil as well as the closing of BellChapel Addiction Clinic, frequented mostly by inhabitants of "The Fields."  Fairbrother, born and raised in the Fields, was staunchly against the reassignment and closing of the clinic because it would limit educational opportunities for children from the Fields and more likely than not acerbate their homes lives.  Many of the children in the Fields were born to drug addict mothers like Terri Weedon, who of her many children, only has two who have yet to be removed to foster homes by Social Services, seventeen year old Krystal and two year old Robbie.  The story of the Weedons from the Fields is interspersed with the stories of some of Pagford's most revered residents, like the Mollisons, who opposed Fairbrother's agenda at every turn, and the Walls, who both work at Pagford's school, and the Jawanda's, an Indian couple respected only because they are both doctors, and the Price's who try to stay out of everybody's way.

Like Harry Potter there are a lot of characters, but unlike Harry Potter, no one set rises to the surface for the reader to stand behind and really get to know.  Everyone in this novel is equally flawed and spiteful.  In this respect, Rowling's adult novel is much more realistic than her previous work and about much more than politics.  In fact, like Harry Potter, it's central message seems to be about having tolerance for those around you, but in the town of Pagford where stereotypes and stigma run deep, it's not that easy.  None of the characters ingratiate themselves to the reader.  I felt sympathy for many of them, but I actually liked very few, if any of them; some of them seemed slightly stock.  At times Rowling's novel was shocking - the Weedons are not like the Weasleys who are considered poor in the wizarding world, but it's a shabby poor, and one that their good spirits make up for.  Nor in the most mistreated parts of Harry's history was he ever neglected like Robbie Weedon.  It is a disgusting and bone-shuddering life that Rowling depicts, but what's worse is the townpeoples' attitudes towards this very obvious problem.  Some of the members want to cut the problem out like a bad spot in a piece of fruit or in the skin, but it goes much deeper than that.  While reading Rowling's novel, I was constantly reminded of the current racial and political clime.  What's to be done about the rate of unemployment and the overreaching of government aid programs?  When does aid become a burden?  Should someone who falls off the wagon be left there to pick up again on his or her own? 

As a self-proclaimed fan of Harry Potter, I knew this book would be the furthest thing from Harry Potter, and I was right, but it's hard as a reader of Harry Potter to separate that author in my mind from this one as I'm sure it was hard for Rowling to separate herself as the author of Harry Potter from the author of The Casual Vacancy.  In some places, she tries too hard to make the distinction that this is not a novel for children.  In the first thirty pages, I encountered some very adult themes, language, and descriptions that seemed not at all necessary to the plot or character development but were merely included to prove that this was a different genre than she'd worked in before.  One thing she can't change though, Rowling is a wonderful writer.  She has a way with the written word, and the novel's language was always a marvel.  Be warned, it is 500 pages, and you will not fly through them like you may have a 700 page Harry Potter book.  This is not a plot-driven novel but a character driven one and one whose ending is markedly different from the hopefulness stored at the end of each Harry Potter novel. 

In all honesty, this is not a book I would have picked up had J. K. Rowling's name not been on the cover, but I'm glad I did.  It was an intriguing read that made me think.

Best matched with readers of contemporary adult fiction who are interested in characterization.