Was she not supposed to write another book after finishing THE series of her career? Absolutely not. If anything she has a hell of a lot to prove Where else would you find jealousy, illegal drug usage, prostitution, teenage sex, LGBT relationships, parental abuse, neglect, cutting, hope, pedophilia, boy band obsession, social politics, power struggles, rape, fear, betrayal, unrequited love, and more f-bombs than Sam Jackson drops in the average movie Sometimes within sentences of one another.
Sound boring? It's not. Like I said, I don't know what book they were reading. I was completely riveted. And I sobbed at the end. Another truth. Sadly, there is no mention of magic, or Hogwarts, or wizards, witches, and house elves.
It didn't need that - it has it's own unique brand of magic. It doesn't mention Muggles either, but it does delve heavily into their lives and the way they interact with one another. I am very impressed by Rowling's first adult book.
It's literary, it's rough, it's blisteringly poignant. I will miss every single character. Brava, Rowling. You have made magic out of the extraordinary ordinary. How not to read The Casual Vacancy : 1. Read the blurb, nimrod 3. DON'T expect a murder mystery - it isn't one. DON'T read it if you are not comfortable with the fact that the woman who might have moulded your childhood, is writing about drugs, teen sex, prostitution, rape etc.
DON'T compare this with her previous works, for the love of God! When it was announced that Jo Rowling was coming out with a new book, comparisons with the Harry Potter series were inevitable.
And so, when they were invariably proved wrong, there was backlash. Half the negative reviews on Goodreads are because it's 'not a Harry Potter book', which just pisses me off, so let's not go there The Casual Vacancy is as steeped in reality as the Harry Potter books are removed from it.
There's nothing fantastical about the story - it's simple and plain, told by holding nothing back. The characterization in this book is simply mind-blowing. Each and every one of the characters is so very real I know this word's been thrown around a lot, but seriously, there's no other way to describe them and has such depth!
Through the course of the book, they are all ripped apart, dissected with unflinching honesty and laid bare for the readers to see. There are very few likable characters in the book, whom we can root for and hope that things work out for them eventually, but all of them end up earning our sympathies in the end.
People have said that the characters in this book are not relatable at all. I disagree. Which one of us hasn't felt like a victim of the circumstances - hopeless, unloved, desperate, bullied, frustrated, at the end of our tether - at some point in our lives?
We are all in the pages of this book. It's just that our stories are different. I think Jo has expertly managed to capture and show the best and the worst of human behaviour in the book; the worst being the inability to see beyond ourselves and our petty problems, while the best being our capability to change ourselves. Having said that, the biggest strength of the book is also, unfortunately, its biggest weakness. The setting up of the characters and their lives just takes too long.
The plot, if you can call it that, begins to move ahead only after about pages or so. Which was probably the reason why it took me this long to finish the book - I was plodding along until I was so caught up that I couldn't put the book down.
The final few pages of the book were brilliant and typically Jo - sad, yet beautiful and touching at the same time. I don't understand why people say the ending was abrupt. For me, there was absolute and complete closure which left me smiling and feeling content long after I finished reading Always a sign of a good book! I would like to reiterate that 'The Casual Vacancy' will not be for everybody. Some of you will probably give up after the first hundred pages, others will crawl along because it's Jo, and in the hope that she might pull a rabbit out of her hat at the end and surprise you with something "magic-ky" she doesn't.
Quite a few of you will hate it, but that's probably because this not your genre and you only picked up this book because of Jo, so, in that case, it's not her, it's you. With this book, Jo has proved beyond a doubt that she can WRITE no matter what the genre is, that she still has that magical ability to tap into some part of us, connect with us and make us care, despite ourselves.
However, unlike the Harry Potter books, this book will probably not be changing any lives any time soon it certainly didn't change mine , but I'm glad to have read it, nonetheless. Accio new-JK-Rowling-book! That's fine. I love you. No, really. Please forgive me. Stephen King. Author 1, books k followers. The village of Pagford may be British, but the human foibles there are universal.
Like the best social comedies, The Casual Vacancy features wit on top and outrage simmering below. Tomoe Hotaru. If you're hoping to be transported to another magical adventure, you'll receive an even greater plummet back down to earth.
If you're going to read this just because it has JK Rowling 's name splattered on there, I strongly advise you to sit back, take a look at your computer screen, and read that book description.
Does it sound like something you would enjoy? Does it attract you, in the least bit, at all? Or does it sound utterly boring you would rather do something more productive like watch Desperate Housewives back-to-back? The Casual Vacancy is everything the title and book cover promises it to be -- plain, straightforward, something so commonplace and ordinary that you wouldn't even notice it's there. This book doesn't try to impress anybody, I think looking at the drab red and white cover would tell you that much, but it will elicit some sort of reaction depending on how you interpret things.
The Casual Vacancy reminds me a lot of the Australian drama film, which is a great, thought-provoking film, I must add. Not because the plot is in any way similar, but rather that they provoke the same general reaction out of their audiences. Some parts are gritty, vile, and just plain offensive.
I've heard a few friends, read a few reviews, that mentioned how Rowling just seemed to arbitrarily slop down a bunch of cuss-words and sex scenes simply to get it across to her readers that this is not Harry Potter, yo! I think we have it all in our heads that Rowling is somehow pressured into differentiating this adult book of hers from her popular children's series, that we're assuming too much of her.
Although it does seem sometimes that she's playing a game of how many penis jokes can I slip into my adult-novel , the real and horrible fact is that in the real world out there, people do cuss -- some much, much more than others. Teenagers do have unabashed sex -- sometimes in public places, if you think the sex scenes here are simply there for the sake of shock value, wait until you meet my having-sex-in-the-mosque friends!
If you've read the book, you'll hate what they did to it. This series made me want to weep - at the senseless waste of acting talent and script material. What's more, it appears that slashing it down from a full series to a 3 part synopsis was done after filming already started, probably by the director tearing pages out on the set, rather than by intelligent script writers.
How else to explain the presence of all the characters from the book, yet no role - not even dialog - for some of them? How else to explain all the setups in Episode 1 that are just left hanging with no follow-up?
What does remain is excellent, completely capturing Rowling's characterizations and the petty snobbery of English village life, but the ruthless editing leaves too much out and too many loose ends. There's no exploration of the interaction between children and parents that is core to the book. There's no hint of who is behind the "ghost", a major plot device.
Sukhvinder, who has a life-changing experience in the original, is literally seen but not heard. There's no resolution for the dysfunctional Price family. I don't know why the scriptwriters even bothered telling us Gaia's name, since she's reduced to a walk-on extra.
It's worth watching just for that. But that's the tragedy of this series - these are the canonical Morrisons, nobody will ever do it better. Rowling captures the humanity in everyone, even if that humanity is not always a pretty sight. There were sentences I underlined for the sheer purpose of figuring out how English words could be combined so delightfully The Casual Vacancy is a comedy, but a comedy of the blackest sort, etched with acid and drawn with pitch Rowling proves ever dexterous at launching multiple plot lines that roar along simultaneously, never entangling them except when she means to.
She did not become the world's bestselling author by accident. Undaunted, she was given free rein by Rowling to reshape the story, bringing to life the rich cast of colorful characters whose lives were mostly told on the page through their thoughts rather than their actions.
Working with director Jonny Campbell, Phelps developed the characters and themes she felt best fit the screenplay, while ensuring the spirit of the adaptation remained true to the original novel. At times darkly funny, it portrays a town whose residents are selfishly stuck in their beliefs and traditions, unaware they have the power to change.
This sadly comical selfishness comes to play an important role as events unfold. The Casual Vacancy Blu-ray Review. Never judge a book by its cover. That is one of the lessons of The Casual Vacancy , the J. Lesson two — our actions affect those around us, so be careful of what you say and do because it can have unintended consequences.
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