Fall Sale! Join BookBrowse today and discover exceptional books for only $3 / Month.

Summary and Reviews of The Casual Vacancy by J.K. (Joanne) Rowling

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. (Joanne) Rowling

The Casual Vacancy

by J.K. (Joanne) Rowling
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Readers' Rating:
  • First Published:
  • Sep 27, 2012, 512 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jul 2013, 512 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About This Book

Book Summary

Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults.

When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…. Pagford is not what it first seems.

And the empty seat left by Barry on the town's council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations? Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising, The Casual Vacancy is J.K. Rowling's first novel for adults.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

The problem with The Casual Vacancy is that the vast cast of characters and all their machinations leave little room for character development. Rowling's characters come across as cardboard cutouts, one-dimensional substitutes for the real thing. Even the situations in the story seem contrived and overly melodramatic – there are very few shades of grey here. Even if The Casual Vacancy might not have fully rounded characters or shades of subtlety in its telling, it finally is an entertaining novel...continued

Full Review (633 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Poornima Apte).

Media Reviews

People
A vivid read with great, memorable characters and a truly emotional payoff....Rowling captures the humanity in everyone, even if that humanity is not always a pretty sight.

People
A vivid read with great, memorable characters and a truly emotional payoff....Rowling captures the humanity in everyone, even if that humanity is not always a pretty sight.

The Washington Post
There were sentences I underlined for the sheer purpose of figuring out how English words could be combined so delightfully....Much of the book I admired, even if I didn’t love..

Wall Street Journal
This book represents a truckload of shrewdness.... There were sentences I underlined for the sheer purpose of figuring out how English words could be combined so delightfully....genuinely moving.

NY Daily News
“The Casual Vacancy,” which one bookseller breathlessly predicted would be the biggest novel of the year, isn’t dreadful. It’s just dull.

The Huffington Post
Generally well-written... a good, though not great, book about small-town, small-minded England.

Los Angeles Times
[Pangford] is little more than a backdrop, a stage set, its lack of depth an emblem of Rowling's inability to engage us, to invest us sufficiently in her characters, young or otherwise, to reckon with the contrivances of her fictional world.

NY Times
Instead of an exhilarating sense of the mythic possibilities of storytelling, we are left with a numbing understanding of the difficulty of turning a dozen or so people’s tales into a story with genuine emotional resonance.

The Guardian (UK)
A solid, traditional and determinedly unadventurous English novel... The Casual Vacancy is no masterpiece, but it's not bad at all: intelligent, workmanlike, and often funny. I could imagine it doing well without any association to the Rowling brand

Kirkus Reviews
A departure and a revelation, though the story is dark and doesn't offer much in the way of redemption (or, for that matter, much in the way of laughs). Still, this Rowling person may have a career as a writer before her.

Publishers Weekly
Minus the magic, though, good and evil are depressingly human, and while the characters are all well drawn and believable, they aren't much fun.

Reader Reviews

Cloggie Downunder

a brilliant read
The Casual Vacancy is the first adult novel by popular British author, J.K.Rowling. This contemporary fiction is set in the seemingly idyllic English village of Pagford, where the sudden death of Parish Councillor, Barry Fairbrother creates a casual ...   Read More
Maeve Caplin

A Casual Vacancy. J K Rowling
A really great first adult book, reminding me of Parrish Council meetings in the 60s and 70s- which I suffered as a child. Well written, witty and true to life.
Diane S.

Not a happy little town
An unhappy little town filled with unhappy, unlikable people but somehow rather addicting nonetheless. Great characterizations, wonderfully dark, tongue in cheek writing, actually kind of reminded me of the town I live in and our relations with the ...   Read More
MaryBeth

Awful
Rowling in my option tried too hard to prove that she could write a book written for adults. The language and sexual situations were sometimes over descriptive and awkwardly used. Hard to imagine that in the small town of Pagford there was not one ...   Read More

Write your own review!

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



The West Country & Council Estates

J. K. Rowling grew up in England's West Country, which is an informal term used to embrace the southwestern part of England, the peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. The West Country doesn't have any rigid borders but generally includes the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset. A looser definition also includes all or parts of the counties of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.

Chepstow Castle and BridgeRowling grew up in the towns of Winterbourne and Tutshill in Gloucestershire. She also spent some time in Chepstow, which is actually in Wales, with suburbs spilling across the boarder into neighboring Gloucestershire. Chepstow also boasts a castle plenty capable of firing up the imagination. These towns, like much of the rest of the West ...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Casual Vacancy, try these:

  • Little Fires Everywhere jacket

    Little Fires Everywhere

    by Celeste Ng

    Published 2019

    About this book

    More by this author

    Winner of the 2017 BookBrowse Fiction Award

    From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.

  • The Music Shop jacket

    The Music Shop

    by Rachel Joyce

    Published 2018

    About this book

    More by this author

    A love story and a journey through music, the exquisite and perfectly pitched new novel from the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy.

We have 14 read-alikes for The Casual Vacancy, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by J.K. (Joanne) Rowling
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Playground
    Playground
    by Richard Powers
    The primary narrator of Richard Powers' latest novel, Playground, is Todd Keane, who at 57 years old...
  • Book Jacket: The Empusium
    The Empusium
    by Olga Tokarczuk
    Not long after checking into Willi Opitz's "Guesthouse for Gentlemen," young Mieczysław Wojnicz...
  • Book Jacket
    Suggested in the Stars
    by Yoko Tawada
    In Scattered All Over the Earth, Yoko Tawada's 2018 lightly dystopian novel, a ragtag group of young...
  • Book Jacket: Shred Sisters
    Shred Sisters
    by Betsy Lerner
    "No one will love you more or hurt you more than a sister" is a wry aphorism that appears late in ...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    The Bog Wife
    by Kay Chronister

    Five West Virginia siblings unearth secrets after the rupture of a supernatural bargain tying their fate to their land.

  • Book Jacket

    In the Garden of Monsters
    by Crystal King

    A woman with no past, a man who knows her, and a monstrous garden that separates their worlds.

Book Club Giveaway!
Win Let Us Descend

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

Jesmyn Ward imagines the life of an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War in this instant classic.

Enter

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

J O the B

and be entered to win..