Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Book Review: The Casual Vacancy

200px-The_Casual_VacancyThis book isn't going to be to everyone's taste. But I really enjoyed it. The step when reading this book is to completely take J.K. Rowling out of your head. Because if you don't you'll just ruin it for yourself. Done that? Good!


The book is very character driven, not a huge amount of action. The book is building up slowly to a climax but it is more about the characters, their relationships and how they interact with each other. I really enjoyed this as I live in a small village and I find it interesting how people know each other from just being around the place and as I'm a bit nosy I often wonder about the secret lives of people and what goes on behind closed doors. This book is kinda like that.


I found myself wanted to read this after I had put it down to do something else. And if I had started to read it and just thought 'one more chapter', I'd actually end up finishing after 6 more chapters. That to me is a good sign, that I found myself wanting to read more and more. Though it's not necessarily a sign of a good book. I do think it is a good book though as I liked the characters (or loved to hate the nasty characters), I could identify with some, I could identify the characters as 'real life'.


The only downside I thought it had at first was when I didn't quite get the whole J.K. Rowling aspect out of my head and I found it very crude at first. The swearing, references to sex and drugs. At first I did wonder whether she was doing this just because she could, for the shock value and to try set herself apart from Harry Potter (I managed to go this far without mentioning HP!). There did seem to be a certain element of that. But once I managed to get the J.K. Rowling thing out of my head I did find that it fit into the story and it didn't bother me so much. Also it can be a dull in places as it isn’t so action filled.


Overall I would recommend the book, especially if you like character based stories. It’s a sturdy read and if you like J.K. Rowling’s ‘voice’ then you should like this.

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