On with the review.
In
theory, many people worldwide have read
J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy. None of them happen to be my
friends. I’ve tried to talk people into
reading it since its publication, but they resolutely go back to Hogwarts or
move on to the mystery series that she penned under the pseudonym of Robert
Galbraith, involving Cormoran Strike.
I can
honestly say this is a shame, but then again, it falls into the same genre
where I keep The Catcher In the Rye. It is a book with a group of anti-heroes that
makes you philosophically uncomfortable at times and that, for me, is almost
always, a story worth reading.
I have
to warn you that this is not for the same audience as Harry Potter. The first jolt
is in the writing. This is undeniably a
book for the older set and while Harry talked about having a crush that makes a
monster in his chest awake, a character gets an erection on the schoolbus in
the first few chapters. Samantha, the
wife of an influential man, lusts after a member of a boy band that her daughter enjoys. A main character’s mother is known to have
turned tricks for heroin and there is one of the most apathetically-described
rape scenes ever. The characters say
things a lot more graphic than “Merlin’s Beard!” and “Alas! Earwax!”
So the first thing you should be aware of is the new culture shock. And none of it is done for the shock value;
it’s part of the story.
The book opens from the perspective
of the pivotal character, Barry Fairbrother.
He’s been hard at work for a deadline and subsequently forgotten his
wedding anniversary. Not to worry, he
has a romantic dinner planned for his wife at the local golf club. His wife is mollified that he’s taking her
out until he suffers a ruptured aneurysm in the carpark and dies before the
ambulance can take him to the hospital.
I call
him the pivotal character because everything from that point forward is based
on his legacy. It’s as though this were
the story of how the war against Voldemort went on after Harry died (obviously
not what happened, but this is the same author, so I can borrow a
what-if). As Mr. Fairbrother was on the
parish council, his death causes a casual vacancy in which a replacement has to
be selected before an election year.
There
is an equal balance of adult and adolescent characters and every one of them
has something that makes them an unsympathetic figure. Miles is running in spite of the fact that
his father could have shoehorned him into power as head of the council. Parminder was devoted to the dead Mr.
Fairbrother and becomes vicious in her attempts to put power in the right
hands. Simon wants to win the seat on
the council so he can take the bribes that politicians are supposed to
get. Among the adolescents, we have
Krystal, who is the only one to reliably care for her brother, but who also
lets him wander off while she fornicates with a local boy. Sukhvinder is an underperformer who often
makes excuses for herself. “Fats” is
obsessed with being “authentic,” but is mostly an unrepentant prat. You get the idea.
The
person who, morally and philosophically, should have carried on Barry’s legacy,
is Colin Wall. He is the one who
understands what his old friend was trying to do, but he is a cripplingly
nervous person whose variety of OCD convinces him that not only did he have the
temptation to act inappropriately, but he actually did so and now everyone is
aware of it. This is all in his head, of
course, but it’s the thing that strips him of his courage and makes him no more
remarkable than the person running so he can live up to the family name or the
person hoping that he can be persuaded to vote a certain way.
Every
character has their own storyline and the most frustrating thing about the book
is that it’s possible to despise and empathize with the players. I love Parminder for wearing a royal blue
sarong to her friend’s funeral, but want to slap her for HIPAA violations
shouted out during a political debate.
Tessa, the wife of Colin, is a stable character who wants to help others
as a guidance counselor, but she fails as a go-between for her husband and
adopted son, making them each other’s antagonists because of misperceptions
that could have been resolved.
Apart from
the characters, Rowling explores the effects of bullying at all ages, the
influence of homophobia, the consequences of drug abuse, the shortcomings of
the foster system, rape culture, adultery and mental illness. In short, the entire book hinges around a
very inconsequential election in the grand scheme of things, but it is a
masterpiece on the duality of human nature.
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