The Casual Vacancy

I thought this was slow to begin then I was hooked. The characters are deep, complicated accessible human beings. Poignant story of class, priviledge, accessibility and how our myopic points of view can damage our community. Beautiful self discovery for many characters.
Find a list of characters on line. It is very helpful. Try the site The Pagford Pages.

Ik twijfelde tussen 2 en 3 sterren. Dit boek was lastig. De laatste 100 pagina's hebben het verhaal goedgemaakt, vandaar de 3 sterren.

Mijn grootste frustratie was dat er teveel personages aan bod kwamen. Ik had heel veel moeite om ze uit elkaar te halen en te herinneren hoe ze aan elkaar gelinkt waren. Je moet je hierdoor echt door het eerste deel sleuren, vooraleer je begint door te hebben hoe het verhaal in elkaar zit. Sommige personages hadden voor mijn part echt geschrapt mogen worden, want ze dragen weinig bij tot het geheel. Nog een andere frustratie was het paginavullende gezaag over The Fields en al het politieke gezever dat erbij kwam kijken. Uiteindelijk heeft het niet veel tot het verhaal bijgedragen, naar mijn mening.

Maar, zoals ik zei, het laatste deel heeft het wel goedgemaakt. Het einde was voor mij verrassend en onverwacht. En net daarom zou ik toch aanraden om het boek eens te lezen en je door die eerste 200 pagina te sleuren.

This is J.K. Rowling's adult book. Well, her first adult book, maybe she'll write more.

It's about small-town politics.

Somehow one doesn't expect small-town politics to be gripping stuff, but it is, and the more you get into it, the more gripping it gets, as the community and families are gripped by political and personal rivalries and you keep reading to see what happens next.

Me ha encantado. Pensaba que iba a ser un toston, pero ha sido todo lo contrario, emocionante hasta el final. Es increible que a partir de un acontecimiento tan insignificante como la muerte de uno de los vecinos d eel pueblo se desate tal cantidad de acontecimientos (por que los "idilicos" pueblecitos ingleses no lo son tanto, todos tienen su intringulis).

De todas las historias que cuenta, me quedo con la de Krystal que a mi parecer es la mas interesante y la que mas me ha emocionado.

En resumen, despues de leer este libro Harry Potter es como si no hubiera existido nunca.

Many of the characters in this book are vile, and I mean that in the best possible way.

The character I liked best died, and I didn't cry more than a couple of tears, but it took some effort. I hoped up until the very end that someone would help her, and got to the point where any time a character had a reason why it wasn't their problem I wanted to reach into the book and slap them.

Also, I need brain bleach for the eldest daughter's revelation. :P

***

I'm still processing this book.

The shortest possible elevator-speech description is: It's like "It's a Wonderful Life"--only Jimmy Stewart doesn't come back to life at the end--meets "A Christmas Carol"--only Scrooge doesn't reform, and both Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim die at the end.

This book is excellently put together, as you might expect - but deeply disturbing and macabre.

Pagford sounds like a lovely place, and I was looking forward to a book detailing a sleepy, English, village and the twee goings-on there. I wasn't, though, expecting child rape, drug addiction, mental illness, domestic abuse and human neglect on such a large scale.

Very few of the characters end up being likeable in any way - with the possible exception of the dead Barry Fairbrother. As the book continued, I was wondering what it says about JK Rowling's mind that she has so few nice things to say about human beings. There isn't a hero of the piece; all end up being villains in some way or other.

I found this book depressing and sad to read - possibly because it is a pretty lifelike representation of what life is like in 2012 Britain, but also because, like others, I was expecting it to be a Potter-esque fairy-tale. It is no such thing.

A solid book from an author everyone knows and loves. I prepared myself to expect something completely different with The Casual Vacancy and I was not disappointed. Rowling creates such deep and vivid characters that you really feel like you are a part of this small community. You understand how a small town operates and years of resentment or history is presented in way that makes you feel like you have been a Pagford resident your whole life.

However, the amount of characters was something that bothered me. The family tree of some characters was quite extensive that it usually took a few paragraphs to get an idea of how this person was related to someone else and I feel that my confusion in relation lead to missing some subtleties and little insights. This could be my fault because I found frustration in the book and not knowing who was who when I only read small bits at a time. If I was able to read a bit over a short period of time I felt more engaged in the story and had less confusion.

All in all this was a good book and a fun story. It's unlike anything you have read from Rowling before but you will immediately appreciate her ability to create characters that you love and hate.

It definitely had a sad ending. I will have to re-read it to fully understand it all.