Review: #387
Title: The Casual Vacancy
Series: N/A
Author: J.K. Rowling
Read Before: no
My Comments: No matter what, you can’t be such a successful author as J.K. Rowling and not have any of your further work compared to your greatest success, Harry Potter. The Casual Vacancy does not compare to Harry Potter in any way, first of all, the genre and style of writing is very different, and second, it’s not as gripping or amazing. One of the early problems with this book is that the author introduces too many characters too frequently. You end up getting confused at all these names just flying at you, trying to make sense who is who and what each person’s relationship with the other characters are. This makes the first half of the book harder to follow and not as engrossing. The premise of the story is that the death of one person caused a chain of events that just snowballed. You don’t get to see the full force of this snowballed effect until the very end of the book. The majority of the story is average; it’s only until the final thirty pages or so where the events that happen just shatter everything before it. It’s quite sad and emotional. The ending isn’t handled well as too many things that were major issues for the characters are left open. There is no resolution for Andrew’s aggressive father and no outcome for Andrew’s and Gaia’s relationship amongst other things. It’s disappointing that there wasn’t enough closure for all the subplots. Then there’s all the swearing, literally every second page or so will have more than one occasion of swearing. Sure, it’s an adult fiction book, but that doesn’t mean it needs to have all that swearing (which does not add much), and so many sexual actions. If not for the relatively better ending, the rating wouldn’t have been as high.
Rating:
6/10