The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling --- 503 pages
J.K. Rowling's much anticipated first post-Harry Potter book is advertised as "a big novel about a small English town," and her first written for adults. At 503 pages it does qualify as big; and the setting, the seemingly charming village of Pagford, is a small English town. And yes, the subject matter and the language are definitely aimed at adults, although some of the key characters are teenagers in the throes of very turbulent adolescences.
Like Agatha Christie and so many other English novelists, Rowling puts the microcosm of her small town under the microscope to reveal, in pitiless detail, the desperate lives behind the bright facades and false bonhomie of Pagford, when the unexpected death of one of Pagford's leading citizens sets off a "take no prisoners" war over his vacant seat on the town Council.
But what is really sad about this book (as several reviewers have pointed out), is that ALL the characters are so unpleasant, so unlikable and so wrapped up in their own grievances that it's impossible to care very much about what happens to any of them. It remind me more than anything of the 18th century English artist William Hogarth, who chronicled the sordid and brutish underbelly of society in such works as "The Rake's Progress." Rowling's opinion of humanity seems pretty grim and not for the squeamish or faint of heart.
