The Casual Vacancy

Recently, I read The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling's new novel. It's a good read, and what follows is my book report. I hope I get a good grade on it.

The Casual Vacancy opens with the death of its pivotal character, Barry Fairbrother, dead of a cerebral  hemorrhage on  page five. Friend to troubled youth and (we think) honest businessman, Barry had been  a member of the town council where he lived in England, where he was the primary antagonist of Howard, the obese owner of a deli and chairperson of the council. Barry's death means there is a "casual vacancy" on the council and a special election must be held. Howard soon persuades his son Miles to try for the open seat.

If Miles is successful, there will be a majority on the council ready to take care of the Fields, a slum community. Ultimately, Howard and many others in town would like to demolish the Fields in the expectation its many residents will just go away, or failing that at least redraw the town boundaries to foist the Fields onto the neighboring larger town. Doing so would eliminate the costs incurred by the many welfare recipients there and require their children to attend schools in the larger town. Also, it would mean closing the drug treatment facility there which Howard thinks is a financial drain on his town and, in his opinion, shows very little evidence of doing any good.

Howard is married to Shirley who mostly follows in his ample shadow. Most of her resentment is directed at Howard's business partner, who seems to function as a kind of second wife to the big man. Then there's Samantha, Miles' wife, bitterly hostile to her in-laws, who mostly drowns her resentments in large quantities of wine.

The town doctor is Jawanda Parminder, political ally of Barry Fairbrother and possibly secretly in love with the dead man. She and her handsome husband are the parents of Sukhinder, a teenager who is the victim of constant harassment from the boys at school. Sukhinder takes out her hatred and feelings of inadequacy by cutting herself with a razor blade.

There are more characters. Let's see, there's Gavin, Miles law partner, trying to get out of a romantic relationship with Kay, a social worker, clinging to him. Kay is the mother of Gaia, prettiest girl in school, who wants nothing more than to return to London where she and Kay had lived until Kay followed Gavin to our little hate-riven town.

Then there's Samuel (I think that's right, I don't have the book in front of me.) who is ferociously aggressive with his wife and their two sons, Andrew and Simon. Our boy also receives stolen merchandise and uses his employer's equipment for personal purposes. There's the vice-principal of the school and his wife the guidance counselor, parents of Stuart, called "Fats" by the other kids, who is obsessed with what he calls "authenticity," by which he means no moral convictions at all.

Above all, there is Krystal Weedon, angry teenager, who lives in the Fields with her heroin addict mother and Krystal's little brother, three year old Robbie. To call their home a dump would be to compliment it. Krystal does try to do some cleaning and cares for Robbie as best she can while her mother dozes and doses. Terri Weedon trades sex, and allows the house to be used as storage space for stolen merchandise, for heroin.

The only person who managed to make a connection with Krystal, saw anything other than deliquincy and promiscuity in her future, was Barry Fairbrother, who formed a girls' rowing team at the school with both Krystal and Sukhinder as members of the crew. But now Barry is dead and the team will certainly be disbanded.

The story has to do with the election, but the "casual vacancy" also refers to the empty places in the characters' hearts. For much of the story the reader must be thinking, "What an awful bunch of people." Only Krystal shows any real honorable human emotions, and it is her lapse in a pathetic attempt to change her life for the better that leads to the final tragedy.

I suppose there is some sense of redemption at the end of  the book, but for the most part venality and selfishness triumph. Sukhinder and her mother, and Gaia and her mother, find some reconciliation. So does "Fats" and his parents. Andrew begins to realize that he can stand up to his despicable father.

For a while, reading The Casual Vacancy, I kept thinking of Peyton Place, a novel from the nineteen fifties, about another small town and the many secrets of the townspeople there. I guess there are also echoes of Sinclair Lewis' books about American small towns, and the shallow manipulative people who lived in them.

This is not a great book, I doubt it will be read fifty or a hundred years from now, but it's a good book, especially after the first hundred pages, when all the characters have been introduced and we start to see how they will  interact. Read it if you have time, but don't expect to find Harry Potter or anyone resembling him in there pages.