Monday, August 19, 2013
So I finally finished reading J.K. Rowling’s first non-Harry Potter book: The Casual Vacancy, which shows us just what Jo is capable of. This political comedy-drama is miles away from everybody’s favorite boy wizard, but I enjoyed reading it nonetheless. So is it worth adding The Casual Vacancy to your summer reading list?
Only if you have a lot of time to spare. I probably took longer than most people would to read the whole thing, but it was still a lengthy read. It’s about six thousand words longer than Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, so it’s definitely shorter than most of the Harry Potter books. But of course, length is not the only determining factor. I’ll talk more about this later, but first, a brief (spoiler-free) synopsis.
The Casual Vacancy follows the day-to-day activities of the small English town of Pagford. The denizens of this town enjoy peace, quiet, and a nice cup of tea and biscuits while sitting on the puffy couch cushions of their warm and cozy living rooms. Pagford is governed by the Parish Council, which attempts to always act in the best interests of its citizens. But when a key member of the council dies unexpectedly, the whole game changes drastically.
You see, Pagfordians very spitefully detest the city which lies to the north of them called Yarvil. There’s an impoverished neighborhood in Pagford called the Fields located on the Yarvil border, and some Pagfordians want nothing to do with this nest of smack addicts and welfare deadbeats. They’d prefer to relocate the border and unload the Fields on Yarvil so the low-born children of the Fields don’t go to school with their own precious offspring.
Then of course, there are other Pagfordians who feel that the people of the Fields must be supported and encouraged so that they may improve their situation. They also feel that it is absolutely crucial to continue funding the drug rehabilitation clinic in the Fields, or else many addicts will fall back into their bad habits. Barry Fairbrother, who grew up in the Fields, leads the pro-Fields alliance on the Parish Council, until an unknown brain aneurysm cuts his life tragically short. Now there’s a vacancy on the council, and whichever side wins the election for this seat will undoubtedly turn the tides in the war over the Fields.
Now, all this is essentially explained to the reader exactly as I’ve summarized above, but it’s only necessary background for the actual story. In fact, Barry Fairbrother dies in the very first chapter! The rest of the book follows various members of the Pagford community, young and old, male and female, poor and wealthy. It’s a bit like the A Song of Ice and Fire series in that it switches between several characters chapter by chapter. We get to know these characters, their personalities, their motivations, their fears, and we come to know that in such a small community, one person’s actions can have a great effect on others.
Other than a few opening chapters, the Harry Potter series followed a single main character, and everything we experienced was from his perspective. The Casual Vacancy, being from so many different perspectives, was quite a change. Sometimes there’ll be several main characters at a dinner party, and the narrative shifts frequently between perspectives, so we understand how everyone is feeling at any given time. It’s a nice change from the Harry Potter novels, and she pulled it off quite nicely.
On the negative side of things, the book did seem to drag on at times. Because there are so many perspectives, we move around a lot and see many things happening at the same time. A single major event occurs, and the next three chapters go around to each character as they find out about it and react to it. It felt very much like a soap opera put on paper, and although some people like that sort of thing, to me, it was a bit of a snooze-fest. Imagine an entire book about the Dursleys, and you’ll get the idea.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found that Jo’s strength is in mystery. There’s always an element of mystery in each of the Harry Potter novels, a sort of whodunnit for the reader to figure out. Who is the heir of Slytherin? Who is the Half-Blood Prince? Who put Harry’s name into the Goblet of Fire? The Casual Vacancy had none of that. There was no mystery, we knew exactly who was behind everything from the beginning. I kept waiting for a big reveal, like what’s-his-name is actually so-and-so’s father or something like that. But no, there was nothing. I mean, the climax did have some serious impact, but I just wanted some mystery, I don’t know why.
If I had read the book without knowing that Jo had written it, I would’ve figured it out pretty quickly. She has basically the same voice that she always does, although there are some differences in her writing. This is very clearly a novel written for adults. Her use of vocabulary was several steps up from her previous works, and I was very thankful that I read it on my Kindle so I could look up definitions. I also appreciate her inclusion of adult language and adult content; there are certain themes which are definitely not for children. She also has a subtle humor in the way she writes. Not everyone will pick it up, but there were some sentences that just made me laugh; nothing over the top, but polite giggles at least.
Another amusing element is her use of local dialect. If you’ve read any of the Harry Potter books, you know how Jo writes the dialogue of everyone’s favorite half-giant, Hagrid. She writes it phonetically, it sounds like she spells it. She does the same thing here at times, particularly for those characters of low economic and social status. Just read the following fragment of dialogue and try to figure out what is being said.
“Monf ’go … monf’na ’alf … ’bout.”
Did you get it? In proper English it would read, “A month ago...a month and a half...about.” Not that hard to grasp, but it does add some flavor to conversations with these characters. I found it amusing, but of course, there is a limit to its effectiveness. Reading an entire book in such a fashion would be quite trying on the nerves.
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Well, that’s about all I have to say. It was definitely a change of pace, but I’m about ready to get back to my core genre of sci fi/fantasy. Like I said, read it if you’ve got the time, ‘cause some of the stories are pretty amusing, though it does tend to drag on a bit, sort of like this review.
