Author: J.K. Rowling
Publisher: Little, Brown
What’s this? A book? What the hell is that? Well kids, way back in the Jesus time some guy got it into his head that he would take a bunch of rolls of papyrus, smash them together, write some sweet picture-symbols on them, and then sell them to mongoloids to use for firewood during the winter time. I won’t always review them, mainly because I’m a slow reader and long-winded enough, but I thought it would be a nice change of pace to leaf through some pages and then tell you about it. Plus, with all the school I’ve been doing I don’t have time to watch movies as much as I like, but can sneak in a page or two during class downtime. So, without further adieu, let’s jump into this business and see what all the fuss is about.
I’m going to dispense with talking about how Harry Potter has ended and J.K. Rowling is trying to make a sincere and honest departure from the precedent she set with that particular series. It’s only natural to make that kind of comparison, and frankly my reviews at least try to make an attempt that allows a work to stand by itself wherever possible. It’s only fair.
The Casual Vacancy is a character-driven adult fiction story about a small town full of small-minded, nosey, and generally unpleasant people that are drawn together (both directly and indirectly) to deal with the death of a prominent young man on the local council who was a sort of paragon. His now vacant seat (of which the title is derived) is contested by several townsfolk who lust for the power and prestige that being a local leader over a rabble of hicks brings. As the story progresses, the point of view drifts transparently and fluidly from person to person, with little machinations set up and paid off in ways that are decidedly backhanded at best. There is no hero of the story to speak of, rather we’re left rooting for one person when they do something awesome, and then we switch gears to hate that same person when they do something particularly devious, sometimes in the same chapter. At its heart it is an easily digestible enquiry into the lives of the smallfolk as they scheme and plot against one another, with small victories and tiny tragedies that congeal into a perfect storm of sadness and guilt.
I think there is a little something here for everybody. If you live in a small town, for example, you are probably cognizant of the local crone who has a thumb in everybody’s business. You’ll find that archetype in Shirley Mollison, who has a tendency to ask probing questions of her consorts in a shrewd effort to hold the best cards in her hand at all times. When something particularly tasty happens, she is typically the first person to find out, and she relishes in being the first to spread the rumor. There’s Kay Bawden, a transplant from London (the big-time!), who moved with her daughter to tiny Pagford in hopes of securing support from lanky, indecisive boyfriend Gavin. Her daughter Gaia is ridiculously hot and hates the town and all its crazy people; pimply-faced Andrew lusts after Gaia, who accompanies the homely Suhkvinder around because she is so different from the rest. It even features a town bicycle played by Krystal Wheedon!
Yet, all of these characters are unique in their simplicity which makes each one of them memorable without much unwarranted personality overlap. Ensemble casts are incredibly hard to do, and my argument is that a reader can feel easily overwhelmed with all the different strands in this particular web, especially when they run out of ideas for visualizing faces of so many fucking people. It can be daunting to quickly jump from toon to toon and keeping everything straight as well; eventually it becomes easier to just kind of blur everything and focus on the political theater. That’s more interesting, anyway.
Speaking of political theater, the dominoes take about half of the novel to set up before going down like a house of cards, so those reading on with trepidation may find themselves stumbling up to the halfway mark. The build-up is rather subtle in that regard, what with its little bits here and there that keep its continuity well in line. I really liked how Rowling handled tension between the characters when the pay-off scenes came. They were very well managed and didn’t always turn out the way I wanted them, but were still satisfying turning points nonetheless. The picture she paints of Pagford Parish and its awful, backasswards populace is crude at first; but, given a chance, the novel warms up easily and we learn to care about these assholes even if we’d rather not.
The last thing I would like to mention before I conclude this review is that J.K. Rowling’s decision to go full-on adult audience is, well, appropriate. I guess this is where all that HP hubbub is all abuzz: F words, S words, rape, sex, drugs, cyber bullying, and physical violence abound in this story. Anyone looking for a fun adventure will certainly not find it here; most of these characters are tragic and pitiable, if not totally contemptuous, and the story plods along in a way that reminds me of a supermarket tabloid or dollar-bin book bucket (which is arguably the point). The Casual Vacancy opts for the grittiness of the small-town life rife with skeletons in the closets of its most stalwart and noble citizens. It aims to show a darker side to small town humanity while making no attempt to romanticize any of it and, as far as I’m concerned, it delivers well enough. It wouldn’t hurt to return to the small town simplicity and naivety that this little novel offers, even if it only serves as a bitter reminder about how we might all be trapped in are own little bubbles most of the time.
ThomFiles 