#898
Title: The Casual Vacancy
Author: J.K. Rowling
Publisher: Little, Brown
Year: 2012
512 pages
Spoilers.
Does this sound about right?
“Rowling’s refusal to conform to happy endings demonstrates the fact that The Casual Vacancy
is
not meant to be entertainment. She wants to deal with real-life issues,
not the fantasy world to which women writers are often confined. Her
ambition is to create a portrait of the complexity of ordinary human
life: quiet tragedies, petty character failings, small triumphs, and
quiet moments of dignity. The complexity of her portrait of provincial
society is reflected in the complexity of individual characters. The
contradictions in the character of the individual person are evident in
the shifting sympathies of the reader. One moment, we pity Stuart, the
next we judge him critically.” Actually, that’s a summary of Eliot’s
Middlemarch with a few names and tenses changed (actual quote at
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/middlem...).
Some online reviewers, especially those who read the free previews,
have rated this book low on Amazon and elsewhere and stated that it was
boring so they did not continue. These reviews may be translated as
“tl;dr” comments. The readers might say the same of
Middlemarch.Many
of the early professional reviews also seem to me to miss the mark,
perhaps because the reviewer had to read the book in a few hours with a
phalanx of Little, Brown lawyers on hand. They seem to have skimmed for
easy quotes and have missed much of the context that situates what
they’ve plucked from the text. Like some of the the sample-only readers,
they have not taken the very obvious cues of the novel’s opening that
it will build gradually. Unlike the Harry Potter series, this is not
action/adventure, or even mystery.
The Casual Vacancy
indeed starts slowly. Because the novel at first presents itself as a
comedy of manners, it’s no surprise that Rowling takes some time to
introduce the large cast of characters as they first react to Barry's
death. While most people are initially socially appropriate (at least in
public), the death inspires both noble and self-serving thoughts. Like
the people of Pagford, the reader only discovers these aspirations and
interpretations as the story and relationships unfold. The vacancy left
by Barry turns out to be anything but casual.
We see families
interacting with their members and with other families. The genre
gradually shifts to become more plot- and action-driven as thoughts
become deeds, sometimes not for the better. The reader sees several slow
train wrecks in the offing as events inexorably roll on.
This
is not a happy book, and it is not uplifting. Most of the characters are
unlikable, though as their stories unfold, their complexity in some
cases increases the reader’s sympathy and identification. There is a
great deal of swearing, shagging, smoking, and drug use (none of which
would have been particularly shocking from another author). There are
many mean, small-minded acts. Yet none of this is glamorized (most of it
falls in the faintly absurd to somewhat gross spectrum), and it is
matched by many characters’ sad evaluations of their own relationships,
longing to be closer to (or farther from) other people, agony over acne
and hair, helplessness, and fear. People wish they had each others’
families. Triangulation, insults, secrets, and violence occur behind
closed doors. Rowling realistically depicts pettiness, teenage angst,
teen and adult posturing, and the sometimes stifling and intrusive
nature of small towns and their politics. It is like being at your
social services job day and night. It is depressing. It is also very
funny, though this is only occasionally presented in character’s actions
and is more frequently evident in surprising adjectives, comparisons,
or characters’ thoughts that veer from what is expected. There are,
though, events that are deeply, wonderfully absurd, and all the more so
for the earnestness and self-absorption with which they are enacted.
Grief
is a constant theme--grief for lost people and lost opportunities.
Rage, both acute and simmering, appears time and again. The major
actions catalyzed by Barry’s death and its initial implications can be
characterized as
The Long Secret
meets anti-Potter. What happens when teenagers take matters into their
own hands? Generally speaking, the outcome is not good. Where Harry
saves his world, the adolescents of Pagford destroy it. Most of the
adults, who strive to assuage their inchoate longings with gossip, sexy
boy bands, and reading posts by Barry’s ghost, and who regularly
misinterpret motives and are often wounded by each other, are no better
or more mature. More complex than Harry Potter, this story ends without
tidy wrap-ups, and more like
The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The ghost indeed exacts his due, though Jesus-like Barry might be horrified by this misuse of his legacy.
Barry’s
saintliness probably would have showed more tarnish had he been alive
and present through the book; he serves as a symbol of, among other
things, the other characters’ longing for a Jesus-like figure to hold
their need for absolution. However, redemptions are few and far between,
with the only unequivocal example being the river-dunking of Sukhvinder
Jawanda.
A few criticisms:
Like the Harry Potter series,
this is structured as a chiasmus. The reader who guesses or observes
this may find the events of the end of the book too predictable.
After the second incident, the third time a teen trashed an adult online seemed reductive and mechanical.
While
I’m not familiar with UK law, I will imagine that had Parminder Jawanda
aided Howard during a medical emergency, she would have been in the
clear. Why Kay would violate a client’s confidentiality several times,
with no consequences, I cannot say, but it seemed like an easy way for
Rowling to share information without straightforward exposition.
Exposition
is one of Rowling’s stylistic weaknesses in Harry Potter, and there was
still much telling rather than showing here. However,
The Casual Vacancy
is an improvement. Characters have more interiority, and even though
this sometimes has the feel of interior exposition (as when Fats
ruminates over an “authenticity” most reminiscent of Sartre’s
Nausea),
there is somewhat less told about the characters by an impersonal
narrator. The shifts of perspective throughout the novel contribute
immensely to Rowling’s ability to give us characters in action rather
than words about characters and pronouncements about their actions. In
this regard, it's better than Harry Potter.
