The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

This book is not Harry Potter. Rowling's skill at managing a large cast of characters and connecting widely diverging elements of the plot is still present, and she presents some scenes really well, with dark humor coming through. Whether recounting the disappointments of a dinner party or a mid-life infatuation with the lead singer of a boy band, she seems especially sharp on both life's little disappointments and the struggle of putting up a good face in spite of them. The story's sharply plotted and entertaining--Rowling takes the occasion of the sudden death of a parish councilor in the small town of Pagford to air the town's hypocrisy and deep-seated divisions. The novel's point-of-view jumps rapidly from character to character, and the many connections between characters from all walks of life (and between the people who live in Pagford village proper and the Fields, a low-income housing development which many Pagfordians are trying to annex to the neighboring town of Yarvil) belie the idea that the Fields are not properly part of Pagford. Rowling also investigates the motivations of charity and social work (many characters who are professionally involved with helping the poor ignore huge problems within their own families). The book defiantly sets itself apart from the Harry Potter series with plenty of drug use, sex, violence, and rough language. This roughness does not, in and of itself, make the book a bad book (although it does make it inappropriate for many of Rowling's younger readers). Still, my biggest disappointment with this book is that it has lost the magic that imbued the Harry Potter books. I'm not talking about actual magic here, obviously, but the magic of a story with epic scope--even if the Harry Potter books didn't always live up to their potential, they started with the idea that we can be our best selves; The Casual Vacancy proposes that, despite our best intentions, we rarely escape our worst selves.