The name J.K. Rowling pasted on the cover of the book is inevitable. But if you are expecting another Harry Potter then you’d be mistaken. The J.K. Rowling we know here is starkedly different than the medusa that had penned the world’s most successful book series of all time. Of course, the tone here is more adult, Rowling does little to hold back on the prose and vocabulary and dare I say it, if I had not known it was J.K. Rowling, I would have believed that it was written by another author.
No, this is not a bad thing at all. It’s a good thing that a writer can show her range. And though the publishers had banked on her name, and that the sale of the book was a commercial success, it wasn’t on the same level as her Potter books. And this is perfectly understandable: Harry Potter spoke to a wider audience and The Casual Vacancy is a very much adult novel. But how much of the book’s success can be attributed to Rowling’s brand is hard to say. If I tell anybody right now that I’m reading a novel called The Casual Vacancy, I get weird and confused looks before I disclose that it’s a book by J.K. Rowling.
So we will need to judge the merits of the book on its own then, as we should. Rowling shows us that she’s a writer who’s capable of diving deep into her character’s minds and writing about their thoughts beautifully. Yet, it is difficult to find a strong centre and equally as difficult to like any of the characters. With a thin plot, unlikeable characters that you probably won’t go for beers with, but at the same time penning a prose that shows her mastery as a writer, The Casual Vacancy is a mixed bag. I don’t see the book as a future classic though it is prominent in book lists to tick off.
The death of Barry Fairbrother is a seismic shift in humble Pagford
Barry Fairbrother, who we understand to be a renaissance man extraordinaire in the town of Pagford, was plagued by a headache for a couple of days and passed away with an abrupt aneurysm. Barry almost held the key to the city, leaving a position of the parish chair empty resulting in a casual vacancy.
The empty seat will be a vigorous battleground between two factions in Pagford. At the heart of the battle is a property sold to the council by a wealthy local resident, who betrayed the old hands of Pagford as the new property now houses the expansion of the neighbouring Yarvil, inviting the not-right-kind-of-people within the borders of the pristine Pagford. The culmination of this betrayal is the construction of The Fields, about one generation old and the embodiment of the justified fears of the Pagfordians: housing the lower classes, a hotbed for narcotics and unsanitary living conditions.
Barry Fairbrother fought hard to keep The Fields though, as much as Pagford tried to push it back to the boundaries of Yarvil. He was born there, managed to get himself out and make do, becoming one of the most influential men in town. He was also Pagford’s rowing coach to the girl’s team, giving an avenue for less privileged students to be on par with their peers. This is true especially for Krystal Weedon, the daughter of a junky living in The Fields. In fact, Barry had already planned to put Krystal front and centre as one of The Fields success stories, to the dismay of the old guard.
But the election gets messy. Everybody, it seems, have conflicting agendas at play. Though it is only a meagre seat in the parish, the stakes are getting higher by the day. When an anonymous commenter posting as the ghost of Barry Fairbrother in the parish website started spreading rumours that hit close to home, Pagford’s early decay is expedited to its tragic end.
The cracks are starting to show in quaint Pagford
The events which unfolded in Pagford at its core is a portrayal of society in freefall without its knowing. It is perhaps allegorical in a level. Though most of the Pagford residents are Anglo-Saxon white, save for the Sikh Jawants, it parallels the outlook of England at the time almost a decade before Brexit.
There are enemies at the gate and what was worse, they were seeping in. The old guards are trying their damnest to keep them out, while other more liberal views are giving the newcomers a chance. I have no doubt that the Mollisons, holding the keys to the city and themselves fast becoming relics in their own town, would have welcomed the idea of separating from the European Union. In this way, The Casual Vacancy is apt before its time as the seeds of xenophobia will bear fruit several years later.
But it is also a novel about otherisation, where the comfortable majority look down upon the lower class minorities: drug addicts and mothers of children with futures already broken before they can utter their first words. Krystal Weedon and her tragic end are only logical conclusions to the drama already playing out as her support systems are taken away one by one.
And the support system, this precarious balance lie in Terri, her mother. Terri’s soberness and lucidity would have allowed Krystal to remain at school instead of playing a second mother to her brother, Robbie. Terri’s inability to protect Krystal from Obbo sparked a chain reaction which gave Krystal the idea to get pregnant and seek shelter under state care, which ultimately led to her recklessness in leaving her brother behind.
But we know that Krystal is not a bad sort. She’s a bit rough around the edges, and she might thrown arms every now and then. But her focus is in keeping her brother safe. The girl’s rowing team has her to thank for their success. Unfortunately, the society around her is blind to her merits and would punish her for minor misdemeanors instead of supporting her. Thus, oblivious that they are holding the cards for the fates of those below, they continue the petty fight to push The Fields back.
The battle lines are not only between the old guards and the others, or the rich and the poor but also between the old and the young. The generation gap between parents and their offsprings is a force of friction which would determine the outcome of the events that unfold. The ghost of Barry Fairbrother, spilling nasty but eerily accurate rumours in the parish website, were children getting back at their parents.
But is this generational gap a reflection of what has been happening in England on the lead up to Brexit? The older generations, more concerned about their own petty problems were piling on more problems for their future generations. The adults, stuck in their own worlds, in their own mind had it coming when their neglected and abused children gave a dose of their own wake up call. But it is, in the end, the failure to connect. And this failure by the end of the novel, proved costly.
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The Casual Vacancy is a book that offered a lot of promise. I love how Rowling writes. However, reading the book was a bit of a fucking drag. I read this book simultaneously as Sophie’s Choice. I luckily managed a secondhand first edition of The Casual Vacancy from Shopee, so I won’t take this book outside where it will get based mercilessly. Though they are two vastly different books, both have meandering styles, almost stream-of-consciousness narration as they navigate through the fickle and detailed thoughts of each character.
Ironically, I found Sophie’s Choice much easier to follow, despite its density and the waywardness of the narrator’s voice. I think the issue with this book is a weak core, we can root for some of the characters, detest a few and couldn’t care less about the rest. But as they are distributed and peppered throughout, it’s hard to really, really root for any of them. Besides, most of them are cunts anyway.
And the scope of the story, centred around the election of a parish seat, is not the most appealing of topics. Sure, it’s not about the parish election, it’s about the fickleness of man, towards class differences, otherisation, holding on to a heritage that’s being slowly suffocated by an inevitable new wave, the breakdown of culture, et cetera, et cetera. I can’t help to think that Rowling was vying for an English War and Peace. But I feel that it fell short, even with its climactic final scene and the retribution.
I have learned one thing though, that I wouldn’t mind Rowling giving it another go. Writers who write like her nowadays are few and far between.
