The Casual Vacancy (Rowling)
The Casual Vacancy , by J. K. Rowling, 2012 Had The Casual Vacancy been written by anyone other than J. K. Rowling, I probably would've given up on it a long time ago. Instead I kept coming back to it, and my "enjoyment" might have suffered because of it. First off, it its neither Harry Potter nor Hogwarts, but I knew that going in. It's not a kids' book either. The language and situations are quite adult, even when it's handling the situations of teens in school from both sides of the tracks. My biggest problem with the book was that I felt like I'd stumbled into a soap opera with a huge cast of characters, making it difficult to remember who was who and what they were involved in. (Can't tell the players without a scorecard, and all that.) I found it confusing to focus on what make be important because I really didn't know where the story was once I got past Barry Fairbrother passing away, leaving an open seat on the parish council, the ter