The feel of the book was nice and gossippy and one can easily lose oneself in it. Maybe all humans are self centred to a large extent be they in a village or a metropolis.
Every character is ensconced in his or her own little world and interacts and thinks accordingly. Perhaps this pattern of interaction is applicable to all of humanity if only the scale were to differ. The novel brings out the passions, the hatred, rivalries and resentment that fester in minds of the adults and children.
The story is meandering and moves at a relaxed pace and it is not devoid of drama. The outside world does not matter to the inmates. There is a scenario that would typify almost any rural community that is wholly weighed down with matters of local importance. The writer has used an incident, namely a death, to bring out the social and political dynamics in a small fictitious English village. Barry felt its residents were the town's responsibility, Howard wants to cut them loose and let a neighboring city deal with them.The Casual Vacancy was a very far cry from Harry Potter.
He and Barry were opponents on the question of the Fields, an area of slum housing on one edge of Pagford (and Krystal's home). His death leaves an opening on the council (the book's title is the term for such an event) and the campaign for the spot proves the old truism, applied to everything from academic departments to condo boards, that power struggles are most vicious when there is the least at stake.īarry's death leaves many people shocked and forlorn - his wife and their four children his close friend Colin Wall, the local high school's assistant headmaster Parminder Jawanda, a doctor who served on the council with him and shared an emotional connection she doesn't have with her husband and especially Krystal Weedon, "byword and dirty joke," tough teenage daughter of a hopeless junkie, a profane, promiscuous girl who responded to Barry's mentoring.īut there are others who are secretly happy he's gone, notably Howard Mollison, a deli owner and head of the council.
The plot kicks off when Barry Fairbrother, a member of Pagford's parish council, drops dead of an aneurysm in a parking lot on his anniversary. No dragons or Quidditch here this is a world where Facebook and Rihanna's Umbrella play roles in the story. That's the name of the quaint little town in the English countryside where The Casual Vacancy is set.
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