Book Count (since 1 January 2012)

Book Count (since 1 January 2014): 30

Tuesday 13 November 2012

The Casual Vacancy by J K Rowling

This book is about a small village just outside a much larger town. There is a decrepit social housing estate sitting between the village and the town, and the central plot concept of the book out of which all the other events flow, is the ongoing dispute as to whether the parish boundaries should be drawn so as to include the estate in the village or the town. The estate is essentially a political pawn and sparks passionate and personal disputes between the inhabitants of the village.

It is very difficult to read this without being acutely aware of the identity of the author. I found the character development minimal, the plot uninterestingly simple and the writing bland. It is easy to draw comparisons with a book for young adults. There are too many characters for any of them to be truly identifiable as realistic people - they remain characters, and in the main they are portrayed as clearly good or clearly bad.

There is one character, Krystal, who is better drawn than the others and to be fair the ending does redeem this book slightly. But for me this book is an average book piggy backing on the success of Harry Potter.

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