The first thing that must be said about The Casual Vacancy is that it is an adult book. It explores adult themes in adult language from an adult or near-adult viewpoint. Those who read the Harry Potter canon and expected that Rowling’s first adult novel would be a nice, clean morality tale for grown-ups — a sort of modern Austen or Bronte — will be disappointed. There is a lot of foul language, a lot of explicit sex, and a lot of deviant and disturbing behaviour from everyone in the book — even the characters that the readers are supposed to find sympathetic. It is a grim, disturbing, unhappy story.
That said, it is a well-written, compellingly told story. In some ways, the very grimness works to its advantage. It’s rather like watching a train wreck: one sees all these utterly mental people racing toward their own destruction, and one cannot look away.
The story seems simple: Pagford town councillor Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly, and leaves a seat open on the town council. Fairbrother was an advocate for keeping the funding of the local public housing project under the auspices of Pagford, while his rivals want its upkeep transferred to Yarvil, the nearby town that was responsible for building it. Fairbrother’s death leaves an opening for his rivals to gain control of the council. It also leaves some of his most vulnerable students with a gaping void in their lives, as Fairbrother had organized and coached the town’s first rowing team, helping a disparate group of girls become a true team. And the political maneuvering for Fairbrother’s seat destroys lives as people’s deepest weaknesses and most fearful secrets are used against them.
But the story is not so simple. In typical Rowling style, there are stories within stories woven together throughout the book — each character carefully developed and painstakingly revealed, and the interconnections between the characters carefully traced. It’s a well-crafted story.
It is also overwhelmingly gritty. There is too much deviance and darkness. It’s as if Rowling felt that she had to tackle every conceivable social issue in this one novel. Nothing is left out: domestic violence, cutting, drug abuse and addiction, obesity, paedophilia, child rape, bullying and cyberbullying, internet security, the deficiencies of child welfare services, teen sexuality, alcoholism, mid-life crises, racism, extra-marital affairs, sociopathy … it’s all there. And it’s unrelenting.
The Greek tragedians knew that there had to be some respite from the horrors that they told. That for true catharsis to take place, the audience needed a chance to breathe. There is no breathing room in The Casual Vacancy. From the first, it is raw, dark, and relentless. The tragedies and traumas press in from all sides. And that is its greatest weakness. Even a tornado has a few moments of peace at its center.