Review: The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling

Wow!

I first became aware of this book when it was advertised as a mini-series on television in 2015. At the time, the critics were divided. The trailers did not excite me; after all, it wasn’t Line of Duty or Broadchurch and I wasn’t particularly bothered, so we didn’t watch it and I didn’t give the book a second thought. It didn’t feature Potter or (Galbraith’s) Cormoran Strike, both of whom had been favourites, and I don’t really understand why I so easily dismissed this offering by a proven great author.

It has cropped up, recently, however, in one of those piles of books from my mum and I thought, maybe it was time to give it a chance. Well, ‘unputdownable’ goes nowhere near describing it although I am sure J.K., as a true wordsmith, could find a better one.

Definitely not a children’s book – J.K. herself made that very clear – and the graphic content, the violence, the sex and the language certainly confirms it, but what a read! Whilst set in a small parochial town, with a limited number of characters and all sorts of unlikely events, there is nothing of the soap opera here. Her characters are credible, not caricatured, and she creates real sympathy for the likes of Krystal who tries so hard, in her own inimitable way, to overcome the bondage of her impoverished upbringing. Her personal moral code might not be immediately obvious but can be found without having to dig too deeply. There is no such sympathy for the smug, self-righteous hypocrites who look down on her. Rowling herself described it as ‘slicing through the society of a small village community’ and she surely succeeds.

Rowling depicts the people of this ‘charming west country town’ with such understanding, painting a veneer of sophistication whilst carefully revealing the sordid underbelly of truth. No one actually gets on with anyone - bored wives despise husbands, children rebel against parents, friends fall out and teenagers are clearly in a class of their own: their agony - often of their own making, but none the less real for that - their deviousness, their thirst for experimentation, their need for space, even their acne. Their selfishness mirrors that of the adults around them, adults who relish the downfall of others, craving gossip (although unable to communicate with anyone who matters) but who crumble when they get a taste of the same medicine. Hypocrites who conceal their true natures and confirm the fact that no-one knows what goes on behind closed doors. In short, a book about human nature but perhaps some of the human nature we prefer not to acknowledge – even in ourselves.

This book is full of pathos yet also yields comic moments. Rowling makes some poignant observations: ‘not to feel, not to care, she’s happier than I am’ is one such, and the circuitous routes taken by those teenage boys to ‘casually bump into’ the current object of desire is something to which we can all relate and perhaps give a wry smile.

By the end, I wanted all the secrets out in the open, all the ends which had been woven in for the reader, tied up also for the characters in whom I had come to believe, and yet that is perhaps the point. This is a frighteningly credible town with its loves and hates, its history, its secrets and lies. The characters do not see the full implications of what has happened, but the reader does – it’s a lesson for us, not them. And perhaps, the only way to survive is for some of those secrets to remain just that.


The Casual Vacancy is published by Sphere.