To Read or Not To Read: The Casual Vacancy

Posted 09/28/2012 by alicemarvels in Book Radar

Ah, the dilemma all us Potterheads face, to try The Casual Vacancy or not? Reviews are mixed, with one critic saying this book deserves a Booker, and another saying the book is “disappointing” and “dull.”

One thing is for sure, if you’re going to read TCV, you have to be ok with some F-bombs.

Check out reviews from around the web:

NY Times:

It’s easy to understand why Ms. Rowling wanted to try something totally different after spending a decade and a half inventing and complicating the fantasy world that Harry and company inhabited, and one can only admire her gumption in facing up to the overwhelming expectations created by the global phenomenon that was Harry Potter. Unfortunately, the real-life world she has limned in these pages is so willfully banal, so depressingly clichéd that “The Casual Vacancy” is not only disappointing — it’s dull.

Time:

It’s a big, ambitious, brilliant, profane, funny, deeply upsetting and magnificently eloquent novel of contemporary England, rich with literary intelligence and entirely bereft of bullshit, and if it weren’t for Rowling’s stringent security measures, it would or at least should have contended for the Booker Prize.

L.A. Times:

It’s hardly shocking that the most fully realized characters in “The Casual Vacancy,” J.K. Rowling‘s first novel for adults, are the youngest.

Entertainment Weekly:

When the novel finally arrives at its predictable and heavy-handed ending, what started as a lively comedy of manners has turned into an overwrought slog.

The New Yorker:

Some sentences cause you to picture a Little, Brown editor starting to dial Rowling’s number, then slowly putting down the handset.

The Daily Beast:

She did not become the world’s bestselling author by accident. She knows down in her bones how to make you keep turning the pages, no matter how old you are. And she is convincing. The dark vision at the heart of The Casual Vacancy may appall you, but it is not easily dismissed.

People Magazine:

Rowling captures the humanity in everyone, even if that humanity is not always a pretty sight. And – though creating Harry Potter was more than enough – if Rowling wants to convince the world that she can cast other spells, she has succeeded.

Newsday:

With its realistic, intense teenage characters, its obsession with hypocrisy and its progressive ideals, the book is a natural for sophisticated high school readers, and other connoisseurs of dark social satire.

The Daily Mail:

More than 500 pages of relentless socialist manifesto masquerading as literature.

The Guardian:

The Casual Vacancy is no masterpiece, but it’s not bad at all: intelligent, workmanlike, and often funny.

If these critics don’t sway you one way or the other, let J.K. do the job herself. In this video of her release day appearance in London, she reads an excerpt and discusses her inspiration and process:

Whether or not you decide to tackle The Casual Vacancy, this re-emergence of J.K. Rowling in the publicity tornado that accompanies any move she makes has us super nostalgic for Harry Potter books and movies of yesteryear.

We are tempted to behave like the Potterhead in this Onion article, and dress up in our Gryffindor quidditch uniforms for old times sake.

Look, it’s a book release, J.K. Rowling wrote the book, and I’ve got a Snape outfit. So I’m just going to go for it.

Instead, we’ll just watch the Harry Potter movie retrospective, Mischief Managed, smile wistfully, and probably just grudgingly go out and buy The Casual Vacancy anyway.