Details
Rent The Casual Vacancy
Author:
Format: Quality Paperback
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Published: Jul 2013
Genre: Fiction - Literary
Retail Price: $19.99
Pages: 512
Synopsis
A big novel about a small town...
When Barry Fairbrother dies in his early forties, the town of Pagford is left in shock.
Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.
Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils...Pagford is not what it first seems.
And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity, and unexpected revelations?
A big novel about a small town, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults. It is the work of a storyteller like no other.
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Reviews
Dont bother with this book. It is full of unsympathetic characters leading uninspiring, spiteful lives who are content to stab anyone in the back and possibly the front. I persevered to the end and then wondered why I had wasted my time. A friend of mine began the book at about the same time and didnt even get a quarter of the way through before giving up. If you want Rowling, reread Harry Potter.
As many reviewers note, this is nothing like Harry Potter. Thats fine, she warned us about that long ago. Unfortunately, taken as something completely separate, it is still lacking. It is impossible to deny that she brought to life a large cast of very complex, very real characters. Unfortunately, thats all she did. Characters are all unlikable and gossipy. The plot lags for many portions, then when she does seem to be building to a climax the book just ends with carnage. Its a very depressing and abrupt ending that left me feeling very annoyed and disappointed in my favorite writer.