Casual Vacancy, J K Rowling
Jan. 6th, 2015 10:37 pmCasual Vacancy
This is one of J K Rowling's other books. It's very different to HP, but when I compared them, I could sort of see the similarities: both are excellent characterisation, simplistic but vivid characters. And interesting if not completely consistent world-building. And well-structured, but sometimes to the wrong goal, plot-wise. But instead of latin-esque magic, it has grinding depression.
Most of the characters live in a large village/small town just outside a large town/small city, and have pointless miserable petty middle-class lives with no worthwhile achievements, ambitions, or happiness, but in grinding depression. Some of them come from the poor estates surrounding the city, and live in drug addiction and poverty, and grinding depression. Did I mention the grinding depression?
As a portrait of what it can be like where living on a poor estate with no job, succumbing to poverty and drug addiction; or living with an abusive family; or living in a successful but meaningless and loveless middle-class life, it's powerful. But depressing to read :(
It has the form of a murder mystery, without actually being a murder mystery, where the councillor, who was the one ray of life in many of the character's lives, who fought to keep open the addiction clinic, and forged several of the girls in the local school who had little to be proud of at the time, into a successful rowing team, dies on the first page. And most of the events in the book are triggered by the vacancy on the parish council.
This is one of J K Rowling's other books. It's very different to HP, but when I compared them, I could sort of see the similarities: both are excellent characterisation, simplistic but vivid characters. And interesting if not completely consistent world-building. And well-structured, but sometimes to the wrong goal, plot-wise. But instead of latin-esque magic, it has grinding depression.
Most of the characters live in a large village/small town just outside a large town/small city, and have pointless miserable petty middle-class lives with no worthwhile achievements, ambitions, or happiness, but in grinding depression. Some of them come from the poor estates surrounding the city, and live in drug addiction and poverty, and grinding depression. Did I mention the grinding depression?
As a portrait of what it can be like where living on a poor estate with no job, succumbing to poverty and drug addiction; or living with an abusive family; or living in a successful but meaningless and loveless middle-class life, it's powerful. But depressing to read :(
It has the form of a murder mystery, without actually being a murder mystery, where the councillor, who was the one ray of life in many of the character's lives, who fought to keep open the addiction clinic, and forged several of the girls in the local school who had little to be proud of at the time, into a successful rowing team, dies on the first page. And most of the events in the book are triggered by the vacancy on the parish council.