When knitting I like to listen to audio books. So this week, while making my new bag, I ‘read’ J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy and I thought it was really good!
In style, the book is an unusual mix of comedy and tragedy, which I really liked and the story is told in such vivid detail that most of the time it felt as if I was watching a tv drama*.
The book is about life in a small English town, which I thought J.K. Rowling captures very skillfully through the eyes and thoughts of no less than 20 main characters, all of whom are beautifully crafted and believable and, in my opinion, are the strongest attribute of this book and what makes it such an enjoyable read, as in actuality the book deals with seriously unpleasant issues like domestic abuse, self harm, rape, poverty.
This is what Time magazine said about it: “It’s a big, ambitious, brilliant, profane, funny, deeply upsetting and magnificently eloquent novel of contemporary England, rich with literary intelligence and entirely bereft of bullshit.”
Here is an inspiring speech by J.K. Rowling about failure. Apparently, she was on the dole just 5 years before becoming a published writer and a millionaire.
* BBC is already making a drama adaptation! Yey!!!
