Skip to main content

The Casual Vacancy


Book Review

Barry Fairbrother dies giving rise to a vacancy in the Parish council.  There are many aspirants for the vacant post.  J K Rowling’s novel, The Casual Vacancy, is partly about the struggles of the aspirants to materialise their dream.  The novel is more about such social issues as juvenile aberration, pornography, drug addiction, and child abuse. 

The novel presents a terribly bleak and partly frivolous world.  Linguistic obscenity hangs heavily on the reader’s mind as he/she turns pages hoping to see some light at the end of the tunnel.  But all that you will get is more and more darkness.  Rowling is writing about a society that shrugs at revelations of evil.  A character in the novel, the adolescent Stuart “Fats” Wall, tries to defeat his father in the Parish council election by hacking into the council’s website and posting a report that his father was a thief, only to realise that “the world, it seemed, had merely shrugged.  Evil is a natural concomitant of existence in such a world.  

Sons and daughters fighting their parents, adults deceiving their friends, parents fighting their children... there’s a whole lot of fighting throughout the novel.  There’s fornication and adultery.  There’s lust of all hues. 

The adolescent “Fats” may be taken as the metaphorical protagonist of the novel.  Apparently he is the only character who is in search of something beyond the given world.  He “had discovered,” says the novel, that other people “were mired in embarrassment and pretence, terrified that their truths might leak out, but Fats was attracted by rawness, by everything that was ugly but honest, by the dirty things about which the likes of his father felt humiliated and disgusted.  Fats thought a lot about messiahs and pariahs; about men labelled mad or criminal; noble misfits shunned by the sleepy masses.”

Fats is on a quest “to be who you really were, even if that person was cruel or dangerous, particularly if cruel and dangerous” [emphasis in original]. 

The novel presents a lot of darkness.  Superficiality and resignation to the status quo.  Varieties of perversions.  The innocent child dies in this world...


PS.  I bought this book tempted by a 70% discount offered by an online seller.


Labels:

Comments

  1. SeetaOctober 28, 2013 at 7:07 PM

    Being a fan of Harry Potter I picked this book up from my Library and to be honest, left it mid way.. somehow she couldnt hold my attention through this one.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 28, 2013 at 7:11 PM

      I was no fan of Harry Potter books though I found the movies interesting. I didn't enjoy reading this book. I would have enjoyed it if it had more passages like the ones I have quoted.

      Delete
  2. UnknownOctober 28, 2013 at 7:34 PM

    Should the book be given a chance as a timepass read during train journey?

    ReplyDelete
  3. RajeshOctober 28, 2013 at 11:21 PM

    Does not look that interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sanjay SharmaOctober 29, 2013 at 12:08 PM

    Where did you get the 70% discount? I want to see some other books there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 29, 2013 at 12:26 PM

      IndiaPlaza gives that discount even now. See the following link:
      http://www.indiaplaza.com/searchproducts.aspx?sn=books&q=casual%20vacancy&dn=books
      If you can't access, just log in to indiaplaza.com and search for Casual Vacancy.

      Delete
    2. Sanjay SharmaOctober 29, 2013 at 3:07 PM

      Okay, Thanks

      Delete
  5. UnknownOctober 29, 2013 at 12:56 PM

    Thank you for the warning sir, I was about to pick this up. I couldn't read the Harry Potter series but watched all the movies. I was tempted as people keep saying she is great, now I know that my decision to leave behind this one is correct.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 29, 2013 at 1:04 PM

      You are welcome, Athena. But it's my judgment, however. There have been reviewers who think Rowling is great even in this work.

      Delete
  6. RatOctober 29, 2013 at 6:33 PM

    i downloaded the e-book version but was so disappointed. i quit it after reading the first few chapters. boring book..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 29, 2013 at 9:48 PM

      It appears there are more people who gave up half way through this novel. I was tempted to do the same. But since I didn't have any other book to read, I ploughed on :)

      Delete
  7. UnknownOctober 29, 2013 at 7:46 PM

    I too was among the band of fools who took this up based solely on the authors skill which she portrayed all along the caricature of harry Potter series. I must have not been surprised when the book fell flat. I may very well be biased in the response as it is unjust to see thi sas an extension of the creative genius of Harry Potter series.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 29, 2013 at 10:03 PM

      Rowling thinks this is one of her best works. Maybe it has some special meaning for her.

      Delete
  8. SidOctober 30, 2013 at 10:50 AM

    Sir why don't you switch to kindle. You'll get most books for free.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 30, 2013 at 11:59 AM

      I don't enjoy reading from electronic screens, Sid. I love books, the very feel of paper.

      Delete
  9. Ujjwal Kumar SenNovember 16, 2013 at 3:52 PM

    Great books, even I like to read from paper books not from kindle, well good blog post.

    ReplyDelete
  10. AnonymousNovember 27, 2013 at 6:40 PM

    I'm not going to pick this one up now. Thanks for the heads up!!

    Niyati

    ReplyDelete
  11. Kokila guptaJuly 18, 2014 at 1:23 PM

    Will steer clear away from it... Your review has made it too clear to me .Thanks !

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

Ram, Anandhi, and Co

Book Review Title: Ram C/o Anandhi Author: Akhil P Dharmajan Translator: Haritha C K Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2025 Pages: 303 T he author tells us in his prefatory note that “this (is) a cinematic novel.” Don’t read it as literary work but imagine it as a movie. That is exactly how this novel feels like: an action-packed thriller. The story revolves around Ram, a young man who lands in Chennai for joining a diploma course in film making, and Anandhi, receptionist of Ram’s college. Then there are their friends: Vetri and his half-sister Reshma, and Malli who is a transgender. An old woman, who is called Paatti (grandmother) by everyone and is the owner of the house where three of the characters live, has an enviably thrilling role in the plot.   In one of the first chapters, Ram and Anandhi lock horns over a trifle. That leads to some farcical action which agitates Paatti’s bees which in turn fly around stinging everyone. Malli, the aruvani (transgender), s...
8 comments
Read more

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
122 comments
Read more

Check the Roads Before You Check My Breath

From The Hindu Whenever a policeman waves my car down, a flicker of indignation rises in me, tinged with a trace of ironic amusement. I was taking a shortcut yesterday morning when a constable stopped my car right in front of a big ditch on a narrow rural road. It was a strategic point: no one could speed away ignoring the police because of the rainwater-filled ditch that spanned the entire width of the road ahead. Another constable came with a breathalyser and asked me to blow into it which I did with a smirk that was intended to convey my indignation. First of all, it was too early in the day for any normal person to be drunk. Secondly, they chose a place which revealed in all its gruesome ugliness that the government didn’t give a f*#k to the safety or wellness of the citizens, travellers in this case. Kerala is a state where an average of over 130 road accidents take place every day. 48,841 accidents occurred on Kerala’s roads in the year of 2024, according to the website of...
11 comments
Read more