This book is an abject horror. Name a trigger, it’s in here. Name a writing mechanic failure, it’s in here. Vulgar, sloppy, and mean-spirited, this book has nothing of merit. If you want to read a literary drama which highlights society’s willing complacencies and shortfalls, and the catastrophic effects of ignoring a poorer or otherwise marginalized community, look elsewhere. Please, look elsewhere; many authors have tackled classism, systemic racism, bullying, marital disfunctions, drug abuse, sexual predators - all with wit, artistry, and heart. JKR has all the finesse of a tabloid writer daring you to look away from a lurid photo.

Breakdown below. Spoilers and trigger warnings ahead.

The Themes: Let me state up front that I am not a prudish reader. That the themes in this book are, at times, sickeningly mature, is not my criticism. For example, the abuse and neglect of a three year old boy – a victim in an abusive cycle which goes back at least as far as his grandfather - is heart-breaking, and realistic, and difficult to read about but deserving of an audience and a discussion. That right there, and how the family’s small, working-poor community doesn’t have enough significant, reliable help from social programs or city council members – in short, how a lack of opportunities feeds into the cycles of addiction and abuse - is a book in itself. If JKR wanted to highlight a need for social reform - an investment, on our part, into our communities – she could have strictly told the story of the Weedons.
Instead, JKR’s intent seems to be much shallower: To show that despite how someone may appear on the surface, underneath all human beings are selfish, disgusting animals, prone to giving more weight to perceived problems (i.e. gossip, delusions, internal monologues, reputations, etc.) than actual, physical problems. To that end, she equalizes every character’s representation in the book. There is no protagonist/antagonist, everyone is morally dark grey (leaving the reader disinterested in or appalled by most everyone), and they are all given equal amounts of representation in the books. What JKR has done is she’s fostered a “Good People on Both Sides” in book form, essentially equating the following problems:
- An unhappy wife is having a midlife crisis and wants to go to a concert to oggle hot boys.
- A meth addict – who turned to drugs after her father raped her repeatedly for years, and who turned to prostitution to pay for addiction – is in danger of losing the only thing she loves, her youngest children.
- A townie wants to vote for the closure of an addiction clinic on the outskirts of town, because the urban population offends him.
- A third-generation immigrant is teased at school – not for her ethnicity, but for her body shape – so she cuts herself and has suicidal thoughts.
- A father brutally abuses – physically and verbally – his wife and two sons, and a neighbor on at least one occasion.
- A cowardly man shys away from breaking up with his girlfriend, while courting a widow.
There are more, but do you feel the imbalance? These are all problems the characters are going through, certainly. But these conflicts are not equal. That sounds heartless; I know, in the real world everybody’s problems are real and all-consuming for them and their sphere, and nobody deserves to be shamed for feeling what they feel… But in fiction, we get to pick and choose our conflicts! We get to focus our writing on making a statement about abuse, about marital strife, about cyber-bullying. We don’t need to make a conflict sandwich of every grievance in town, because in so-doing you set up the false equivalency that all grievances have equal gravity. A woman wanting excitement in her life does not face the same consequences as a woman who will likely get punched in the face if she laughs too loudly. The problem is not whether these conflicts deserve attention, it is whether they all deserve attention at the same time, the “Black Lives Matter” versus the “All Lives Matter”. I argue that no, no they don’t; each family in this book could have been its own book. Or its own section, until the finale, where the reader can see how their self-absorption led to the catastrophic deaths of two/three people. But in flitting around a large cast, hearing their individual hardships side-by-side, JKR tried to do too much, spread the narrative too wide and too thin, and the book essentially complains for 500 pages, the end.

The Structure: Let’s talk about those 500 pages, shall we? This book is a classic case of failure to “Show, Don’t Tell”. JKR used omniscient narration, telling the audience every single character’s thoughts and feelings, only occasionally using a vague phrase like The Secret, so that she could reveal what she had withheld later in the story. You know that saying about, “If you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke”?… This book would have been WORLDS stronger if it had been third person, and JKR had trusted the readers to read between the lines of dialogue and body language, at the hostilities beneath. Let me say that again for the people in the back: Trust. Your. Readers! There is a scene, about halfway through the book, which is almost good: Five people are having dinner, and everyone gets mad at everyone for a variety of reasons. Political opinions, jealousies, toxic relationships – all comes to a head as the wine flows, and people begin to argue. This would have been a great moment for the reader to come to understand how the characters are related to each other, how deeply some feelings have festered, and what their true natures are under stress… But JKR undermined her own efforts, by cutting aside in the narration to explain every barb, what inspired it in the moment, what fueled it years past… Cut. It. Out. Far too much given/written, when the same points could have been made by writing less.
Similarly, the first 240 pages are completely pointless, they are one, long, Dramatis Personae introduction. There is a chapter for each character’s reaction to the news that Barry Fairbrother has died, and further chapters on the history of Pagford and Yarvil. You know where that all comes to a head? 240 pages in, at the funeral for Barry. Through dialogue, and body language, we could have seen which characters hold disdain for others, how folks are related, who is most effected by Barry’s passing, who acts magnanimous versus who is actually sympathetic, etc. The funeral should have been the start of the book, all the central characters would have been there and easily introduced, Krystal Weedon made notable by her absence.
Earlier I mentioned that the book suffers from false equivalencies, made worse by the omniscient narrator. One restructuring of this book that could have made it more inviting is the Choose Your Own Adventure format. Imagine, if instead of a paranormal adventure, the reader were plunged into the gruesome truths and evils of a modern suburb. Imagine if, after leaving the funeral, you could pick and choose which characters’ arcs to follow, and see – in a mimicry of real life – their small part in the whole, and how it effects the finale. Imagine if, through successive rereads, you got a picture of Pagford as a whole, and were able to see how each citizen, in their own way, effected its evolution/degeneration? The omniscience would be there, but in a way which rewards the reader for reading, instead of barraging them with information like a student at a lecture. And it would alleviate the conflict/tonal inconsistencies, by allowing the reader to pick one story line at a time.

Vulgarity versus Art: This book is full of disgusting passages: the thoughts of sexual predators, racial slurs, body-shaming, bodily functions, etc. That’s sort of the point, JKR seems to want to remind everyone that nobody’s farts smell like roses. My issue is that the rest of the text ought to set the tone. Here is an example: We are told that Simon Price routinely takes his stress out on his family. That is entirely the problem, we are told. We are told why Simon is feeling stressed, we are told what all his warning signs are, we are told he has hurt his family in the past, we are told he is about to hurt his family in the present, and then the omniscient narrator keeps right on telling us how next door someone is making tea. Instead, the text could have set the tension for the scene: Light stabbed through the blinds. We see Simon slam the door as his wife hollers, “How was work?” from the kitchen. Simon steps on a small toy that snaps, a shard of plastic tearing a hole through his sock (mimicking the shards of the stolen TV which will be the fuel for his stress and outbursts later in the book). Simon chucks the pieces in the bin before yelling his displeasure at his kid; it’s not immediately apparent that he’s more than a frustrated parent. Over the course of dinner, Simon makes disparaging remarks about the food, or his kids’ postures, “attacking” what’s on his plate with gusto. We see his wife try to change the subject to something chipper several times, to no avail. Down the street, a tea kettle whistles… In a seemingly mundane scene, without explanation of who Simon is and what his relationship with his family is like, the text nevertheless puts the threat of violence in the back of the reader’s mind. An eventual outburst from Simon, and his wife’s total lack of control over the situation, would be earned.
Ambiance and careful word choice are what elevate a work of fiction into a work of literature. JKR’s drama is considerably weakened by the decision to blurt out crass details, instead of building and revealing the crassness of a character over time.

Offense: I have been a literary critic up until this point: themes, story structure, tone… But this book is also personally offensive. It is classist, sizeist, racist, sexist, ableist, ageist, xenophobic, and the list goes on. Sometimes, I think we were meant to understand that the character is prejudiced, not the author. But more often it felt like JKR was unveiling her own personal biases. The language around body type is particularly upsetting. Curvy people appear in this book as one of two things: glutinous or sexually promiscuous (even predatory). Dumpy, pudgy, porcine, dull, overflowing, unattractive – all used to describe characters with curves. (Yes, “unattractive”, and “attractive” is used repeatedly to describe skinny people, even though beauty is in the eye of the beholder.) The idea that physical appearance can be a barometer for moral credence is appalling and absurd. The world is not broken up into Evil Curvy Predators and Good Skinny Victims.
The book’s stance on women is obnoxiously out-of-touch too. Almost every female character is married with children, desires a strong marriage or children, and desires to demure to a strong man in their lives.
There are some romantic passages about the scenery of Pagford, and some equally disparaging remarks about the squalor of The Fields, the eyesore of new construction, the “graffiti and hoodies” which seem to be multiplying in abundance as the city of Yarvil expands… There is not a flip-side moment where someone tries to beautify their home in The Fields with a window box, or a youth is scene making an amazing graffiti mural, or a person in a hood is shown to be an upstanding moral person… Despite the horrible interiors of the Pagfordians she reveals, she doesn’t do much to show a contrast of thoughtful, caring, Yarvillians. Leaving me to assume, that JKR actually believes that rich, predominantly white, suburbs and British countryside, are more beautiful and more moral than urban families/settings. Given, in recent years, how JKR has been very vocal about Brexit and other such topics, it is not surprising, but it is overwhelmingly disappointing and sad, that JKR uses The Casual Vacancy to defend exclusion over inclusion.

Final thoughts: There are ways to address mature topics that draw the reader in. The Casual Vacancy condescends to its readers, in the vein of Mother Knows Best. “A skinny, rich, white woman, living in a classic British town, has the perfect moral compass, and therefore has the authority to remind everyone reading that you are all ugly animals who do nothing but gossip and complain,” is not a story anyone needed or wanted. There is great, adult writing out there: dramas, mysteries, parodies… All of them more welcoming than JKR’s journal in disguise. Don’t read this book.