Rowling has been heralded more for her world-building skills than her wordsmith ones (her overreliance on adverbs drives fussbudget grammarians mad), but I’ve always loved her nimble voice and the quick way she managed to get inside a character’s head and simultaneously comment on its contents. “Krystal’s slow passage up the school had resembled the passage of a goat through the body of a boa constrictor,” she writes, and you know exactly the kind of girl and exactly the kind of school system she’s talking about.
In this one 500-page book, Rowling re-traverses the Potter series’ entire tonal journey: a gradual darkening in which snide comments on small stakes give way to sharp commentary on big ones. The election unearths tensions. The tensions ruin lives. No amount of Reparo spells can undo the things that are done; we’re not in Hogwarts anymore.
(Handout/HANDOUT) - “The Casual Vacancy” is for adults, and it is not about adult wizards.
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British bookshops opened their doors early on Thursday for the U.K. launch of "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling's long-anticipated first book for adults, "The Casual Vacancy."
Which brings up the largest question that every reader of this book will be asking: Can Rowling do it, when “it” isn’t “Harry Potter”?
In her magical series, some of her most spellbinding work related to the minutiae of the world she’d created: What is the sickle-to-galleon conversion in wizarding money? What are the Irish team’s odds in the Quidditch World Cup? Her writing in “The Casual Vacancy” might be as lively as it ever was, but when the minutiae here include a multi-page history of Pagford/Yarvil property lines, I wondered if I shouldn’t just be perusing the minutes of my real-life neighborhood ward’s meetings. A lazy critic might coyly query whether “The Casual Vacancy” contains enough magic.
Much of the book I admired, even if I didn’t love. There were sentences I underlined for the sheer purpose of figuring out how English words could be combined so delightfully. There were incidents I immediately reread because the developments were surprising or genuinely moving. There were characters that I liked, then disliked, then liked again with reservations.
But throughout “The Casual Vacancy,” I could not stop from having one overarching thought, which the devoted fan in me loathes to share since I’m certain it’s the one Rowling is most loath to hear: This book would be a little better if everyone were carrying wands.
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