The Casual Vacancy

A tiger never changes its stripes. This is the great problem of flat characters: they do not change, they do not evolve, which may end up giving little purpose to their journeys. They are usually either stereotyped or mnemonic characters, being defined by their one or two notable traits even after the end of their stories. The great sin of The Casual Vacancy is investing in several similar characters, hoping that observing their chores and personal problems is a fascinating proposition. It is not.

The book begins with the death of Barry Fairbrother, a member of the District Council of the small town of Pagford. The fatality opens a vacancy in the city’s council, initiating a dispute to fill the sit. The plot revolves around the routine of the candidates, the current council members, and their children, aiming to tell the story of the political dispute through the personal lives of the main members of that society.

Howard Mollison, the council leader, is an extravagantly fat guy, owner of a delicatessen, and a booming voice. Parminder Jawanda is a stressed doctor who nurtures a secret love for Barry and hates antibiotics. Kay is a dedicated social worker who moved to Pagford to stay with her boyfriend Gavin, who cannot stand her anymore. Fats is a troubled kid who believes that being authentic is his most admirable trait. Andrew is a young man full of pimples who falls in love with the most beautiful girl in his school and who is regularly beaten and mistreated by his insane father at home. And the list goes on.

The Casual Vacancy devotes a lot of time to such characters without making them interesting enough. They are not just introduced by similar shallow descriptions whenever they appear in the narrative, they are fully defined by them. Howard is presented as obese and with a powerful voice until the end of the book and this is who he is and will always be. In addition to his shallow political position, he has no other trait to speak of. There’s no conflict, no tension, no change. By the end of the novel, Andrew is still just a kid who suffers from acne and has a crazy dad. Fats still wants to be authentic even after the emotional shock in the climax. They learn nothing, they are static, frustrating people to follow.

And the issues they have to deal with are not much more exciting. Samantha Mollison is a woman who is sexually frustrated in her marriage and, because of that, she wants to travel to watch a show of her daughter’s favorite band after realizing she likes to masturbate while imagining the lead singer. And we couldn’t care less. Gavin is afraid to end his relationship with his control-freak girlfriend and reveal his love for Barry’s widow, and no one could find him more unbearable than us readers, after all, no human being can handle a one-dimensional character for about five hundred pages expecting him to make only one simple decision.

It is a universally known truth that a story can contain only flat characters and still be quite entertaining, but for that to happen the narrative must be focused on a certain theme or on an intricate plot, offering many twists and turns. J. K. Rowling does just the opposite, placing the characters in the spotlight: Casual Vacancy is a character-driven novel where all characters are as deep as Harry Potter‘s worldbuilding. It doesn’t work.

The main conflict in the book concerns the proposal to aggregate the community of Fields to Pagford. Fields is described as a dirty, decrepit place, infested by the poor, who are presented as either drugged or deviant, serving as a counterpoint to Pagford’s apparent civility and quietness. A part of the council, led by Horward Mollison, abhors such a union, as it would mean a huge economic and cultural upheaval in Pagford. The other, formerly commanded by the late Barry, sees humanitarian benefits to the inhabitants of Fields in the union: they pity Fields and want to help them.

This political dispute moves at a lethargic pace, as Rowling is much more interested in the uninteresting routine of her characters, which never changes. Every time Kay is at home, she quarrels with her daughter Gaia. Krystal will always berate her drugged mother and worry about her little brother Robbie. Samantha will complain about her life and think lasciviously about her daughter’s favorite band. Always. Every time. Again and again. It’s exhaustive.

And the narrative doesn’t have something to say with such repetition, for the narrator also lacks a voice. In The Casual Vacancy questions and discussions are rarely raised because the narrator borrows the voice of each character instead of having their own, and these characters’ concerns are not political or philosophical. 

On a bizarre note, Rowling here gives the impression that she has just discovered the magical power of parentheses since she uses them constantly (but without rhyme or reason): if initially, it seems that she uses them whenever there is a change in time (flashbacks, for example) we eventually realize that this is not the case when several similar passages don’t contain them. It just doesn’t make (sense).

Finally, the book’s climax is also overly melodramatic and forced. The purpose here is to shock the reader, which may actually be good since at this point in the novel we are probably in a paralyzing stupor, in need of a jolt to come back to life. Shock is the rule here: Simon, Andrew’s father is an irremediable psychopath who kicks the mouth of his little son, calls him a faggot, and likes to watch him bleed. At another moment, we will have to witness a pedophile raping a kid, which somehow even manages to be of no consequence to the plot.

Nothing in The Casual Vacancy works. A tiger may never change its stripes, but at least it is a majestic, cunning, and dangerous creature, characteristics that certainly cannot be applied to any character in this book. Just imagine, Harry Potter fan, the seven books without Hogwarts. Without Dumbledore, Harry himself, the Malfoys, and Snape. Without the magic. Without the fun lessons and the exciting twists. Imagine, therefore, a universe completely populated and dominated by Dursleys. Yeah. The horror.

December 07, 2018.

Originally published in Portuguese on March 17, 2015.