Living in a filthy house in The Fields and raised by a drug-addicted mother, Krystal is the only functioning member of her household. Perhaps the most memorable character of the bunch is 16-year-old Krystal Weedon. I wasn’t confused by the characters or the plot and even though a cast this size can get unwieldy, Rowling interconnects their stories and relationships well, like an expert puppeteer. There are nearly 20 characters Rowling profiles throughout the novel but she plays out their stories well. Rowling shines here, as she often does in crafting complex, deeply thought-out characters. The chaos trickles down to a variety of characters within the town. That, and the general incompetence of Shirley, the site’s administrator and distasteful wife of the council leader, leads to fear and chaos.

Conflict ensues as the council (and many members of the town) weigh in on how to handle the vacancy and the vote.Ī wrench is thrown into the equation when the parish council website gets hacked (this is big news in Pagford, y’all) and dirty, nasty town gossip is uploaded onto the site. In addition, the council was just about to vote on whether a poor, needy area of the town, “The Fields,” and its struggling methadone clinic, should remain part of Pagford or should be incorporated into the nearby larger, wealthier city of Yarvil. In this small and tight-knit town, the unexpected death of a young, prominent man affects a large number of people, young and old. Set in the fictional, sleepy suburban town of Pagford, England, a seat suddenly opens up on the town council when beloved family and community man, Barry Fairbrother, drops dead of a brain aneurysm. It’s realistic, cold, unsettling, and quite depressing. But that’s simply the way to describe it. While describing the book to my family, I used the word ‘adult’ so many times that they thought I was reading erotica. A swift departure from those little, obscure books, The Parry Hotter series, The Casual Vacancy is very much a novel for grown-ups.

Jk rowling books the casual vacancy