Joan Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy

To most, Joan Rowling will forever be “Harry Potter’s mom,” but the writer doesn’t seem intent on stopping there. “Casual Vacancy” has nothing to do with the world of magic or with the naïve notions of reality without magic that exist in the world of Harry Potter.

The new novel – a full-fledged realistic work, where Rowling showed a talent for portraying human characters, worthy of the Russian classics. In this case, the plot and issues are keenly modern, no clichés and borrowing from writers of previous eras.

The book is aimed at an adult audience. Among the topics: politics and social inequality, human rights violations, discrimination against women, racism, drug addiction, snobbery and narrow-mindedness, which leads to the worst crimes.

“Casual Vacancy” synopsis
The setting is the nonexistent town of Pegford. It is clear at once that the events described could have happened anywhere: Pegford and its inhabitants are textbook mediocre – a veritable encyclopedia of provincial Puritan characters with their snobbery, backwardness, poorly concealed cruelty.

Adjacent to Pegford is the poor neighborhood of Fields, actually a slum. The majority of the population are the “unreliable” unemployed, who survive as they have to. Crime, drug addiction, prostitution.

Opposing worlds converge at one point: an old manor house, which is territorially part of Pegford, but at the time the novel begins, it is home to an asylum for drug addicts. Naturally, the town’s prim citizens are not happy with this fact: they don’t care about saving the Fields junkies, as long as marginalized people from the suburbs don’t roam the streets.

A vote on the fate of the homestead is scheduled for the next city council meeting. Either the treatment facility remains and receives funding, or it will be replaced by a spa hotel that will generate revenue for the local budget.

How the vacancy came about
The progressive-minded majority had a bright leader on the council, Barry Fairbrazier. He had common ground with everyone, did not turn his back on those in need, understood the importance of the sanitarium and every little step he took to help troubled families. A cheerful good-natured man, he spared no time or energy for community work, in particular supervising the girls’ rowing team. These activities, victories in competitions, the feeling of being part of a cohesive group were important to the girls.

All good causes are threatened when Barry suddenly dies of a brain hemorrhage. His seat on the council becomes a casual vacancy – well before the scheduled election, it must be filled by someone from the town’s elite. Campaigns unfold, awakening the city’s until now forgotten political ambitions.

Anonymous detractor.
Pegford is keeping up with the times – so thinks the elderly wife of the mayor, who runs the city council website. There’s no way she expected someone to hack into that dull formal page and write horrible things there.

Many of the potential candidates for Barry’s seat would have to drop out of the race because of the frank and creepy anonymous messages on the site. Like blood in ghost novels, they appear again and again, no matter how many times they are deleted. How could anyone know such personal secrets?

Characters
Rowling is good at maintaining multiple storylines and working with multiple characters at the same time – readers of Harry Potter have already seen that. The page length of The Casual Vacancy is dozens of times smaller than the seven Hogwarts books, but the novel is not much inferior in terms of characters. The author methodically peeks into each family, revealing secret sins and bringing to light skeletons hidden in closets for years.

There is no point in listing all of Pagford’s characters – anyone who starts listening to The Casual Vacancy novel online is sure to recognize their neighbors, colleagues or relatives in some of the characters. Rowling perfectly succeeded ruthless realism: in life there is no unequivocal good and evil, and very few truly kind and wise people. Cruelty to the point of murder is often the result of indecision, unwillingness to see the truth.

A significant role in the novel is played by teenage high school students. They are no longer children, they understand many things, but because they are not yet adults, they cannot defend their rights and get to be heard and respected. It is especially desperate and frightening when violence – physical or psychological – comes from parents. Unfortunately, it is not only in single-parent families from the Fields: Behind the facades of beautiful homes are no less monstrous dramas.