<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"The Five-Minute Book Club is back! Our editors took on J.K. Rowling&amp;amp;#8217;s The Casual Vacancy, her first book for adults, with some very&amp;amp;#133;well, adult themes. Although the conversation kicked off with a comparison between this work and the Harry Potter series (it&amp;amp;#8217;s J.K. Rowling! How could you not!?), our editors dove on in to the book as a separate entity, focusing on how Rowling managed its huge cast of characters and surprise ending. (Yes, that means spoilers abound, so proceed only if you&amp;amp;#8217;ve read the book too.) Peep our conversation and add your thoughts below! Samantha Hoback: So, I think she&amp;amp;#8217;s a good storyteller. I just think there was way too much going on, and I could not keep up with the characters. There were way too many characters. And it was just really, really dark, which I was not expecting. Lindy Segal: It took me a while to really catch on to who was whom. I think the good thing about Harry Potter is even though there are a bajillion and a half characters, everyone has these crazy names that are easy to assign to someone. They have very standout qualities. You know Seamus is going to have fire explode from his face. Anna Moeslein: There are specific roles. LS: In this one, it&amp;amp;#8217;s like, &amp;amp;#8220;Miles,&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;Barry&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;amp;#8212;the names are so basic, it&amp;amp;#8217;s like hard to assign them, and that was my biggest thing. It took me maybe halfway through to be like, &amp;amp;#8220;OK. I know who this person is.&amp;amp;#8221; Alison Goldman: I agree with that. I do think one of the things that I love about J.K. Rowling is her ability to just create worlds. So while this one may have been darker and, depending on your opinion, more exciting than Harry Potter&amp;amp;#8217;s world, I still could picture it. You could see everything where people were living, you could picture them going to town, and I think that&amp;amp;#8217;s something that she&amp;amp;#8217;s topnotch at. AM: One thing that the book reminded me of was Middlemarch. They both take place in a small town with [multiple] characters happening. That&amp;amp;#8217;s one of my favorite books of all time, so I liked getting a modern version of that. SH: It&amp;amp;#8217;s, you know, no magic&amp;amp;#8212;none of that&amp;amp;#8212;very dark, deals with alcoholism, and drug addiction, and rape, teen pregnancy, poverty, death, politics, scheming&amp;amp;#8212;I mean, every single dark theme you can possibly pull out, you can find in this book. As long as this novel was, and as much as she compacted into it, the one thing I had a really hard time wrapping my mind around was why the town was divided, including why certain people were living on the outskirts of town. But that whole history&amp;amp;#8212;that took me a while to get used to. LS: It&amp;amp;#8217;s true. In Harry Potter, there&amp;amp;#8217;s a clear reason why there&amp;amp;#8217;s good and evil. In this, it&amp;amp;#8217;s like everyone&amp;amp;#8217;s against each other, and you don&amp;amp;#8217;t really know why. AM: In Harry Potter, you know these are the bad people, these are the good people. But I kind of liked that it was more complicated in here. LS: It is more of a real dynamic. AM: Sometimes people are good people that make bad decisions, or they think they&amp;amp;#8217;re doing something for the good of the people, and it may not be the best. I feel like all the characters&amp;amp;#8212;almost all of them in this book&amp;amp;#8212;have a good and bad side. You didn&amp;amp;#8217;t just hate one character. LS: I think my biggest problem with the book&amp;amp;#8212;and I liked it&amp;amp;#8212;is just that in Harry Potter, even the terrible characters had something redeeming about them, and you know why they are this way. In this book, it was like everyone was trying to come off as normal, but they were all really terrible. I barely had sympathy for anyone. AM: The only character I really liked was Andrew. He was the awkward teen. He was the only character that I felt like somewhat of a connection to. LS: Andrew was so lost. It was like he had this best friend, Fats, who he obviously did not really connect with. SH: Fats had no redeeming characteristics. AG: One thing I will say that I noticed&amp;amp;#8212;so, part of the confusion, I think, of trying to establish who everyone was and what was going on and where people stood on things&amp;amp;#8212;with Harry Potter, you have this character who you&amp;amp;#8217;re basically following the entire time, who does not know anything at the beginning of the series, so you&amp;amp;#8217;re learning everything as he&amp;amp;#8217;s learning everything, and I think that&amp;amp;#8217;s a really good opportunity for J.K. Rowling as the author to introduce everything more simply. Here, it&amp;amp;#8217;s like you&amp;amp;#8217;re giving a small sliver of information every once in a while. I do think she does a brilliant job of weaving from person to person, though. LS: I think she did, as much as you can with this many characters. It&amp;amp;#8217;s like when I watched Boardwalk Empire. There are so many characters, but I still am so invested. But there are stories you care about more than others. I think one I always paid attention to is Krystal, even though she was never ever happy. AG: She was a character where you understood completely how she got to be where she was. SH: And she did have redeeming qualities. She wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t just going along with it. She was trying to make a better life for herself. AG: Do we want to talk about the ending now? What did you think? SH: It was definitely a shock. Not that there was a dark ending or that there was a death, but I think how it ended&amp;amp;#8212;especially, how Robbie was a little bit different because he is the only innocent person in the entire story, so he&amp;amp;#8217;s kind of the fallen angel. But then you get Krystal&amp;amp;#8217;s death too, which was completely shocking. I mean, I knew she would be upset and freaked out&amp;amp;#8212; AM: But she was positioned as this really strong person. LS: I think she thought the only reason she had to live was to take care of Robbie. AG: So once he died, she was like, &amp;amp;#8220;I have nothing else to live for. I&amp;amp;#8217;m not going to be able to do anything else with my life.&amp;amp;#8221; AM: I just think her personality throughout the book&amp;amp;#8212;you&amp;amp;#8217;d expect her to be like, &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;m just going to soldier on.&amp;amp;#8221; AG: Let&amp;amp;#8217;s talk about Krystal for a second because I thought she was one of the, if not, the most fascinating characters, and like we said, one of the ones that we were able to see into her kind, and why she was feeling how she was feeling in doing what she was doing. It felt like was a very complex character that you could encounter in real life. LS: Yeah. Have any of you seen the movie Fish Tank with Michael Fassbender? It&amp;amp;#8217;s from a few years ago, but he is dating this mother and the woman&amp;amp;#8217;s daughter is who I pictured as Krystal. She&amp;amp;#8217;s like not in a good stage&amp;amp;#8212;she&amp;amp;#8217;s 16 in the movie, I think, but this is like this girl&amp;amp;#8212;especially because she&amp;amp;#8217;s British too. I think that every school, every group of teenagers, knows someone like that. SH: Absolutely. And I think what made her so complex was that she has all these troubles at home, and one of the ways she thinks she can fix everything is to get pregnant. I see where she&amp;amp;#8217;s coming from, but at the same time, that would just make everything so much worse. LS: Even though she&amp;amp;#8217;s strong, she&amp;amp;#8217;s just so na&amp;amp;iuml;ve still. No matter how much she has seen because she was like, &amp;amp;#8220;Well, once I get pregnant, Fats&amp;amp;#8217; parents are going to take care of me.&amp;amp;#8221; No. SH: It&amp;amp;#8217;s just really tragic because I think she was a strong character. I think that she was also a very unselfish character in a lot of ways. AG: Whereas a lot of the characters had selfish qualities with everything they were going after, whether it was Kay&amp;amp;#8217;s ex-boyfriend Gavin, who was going after Barry&amp;amp;#8217;s wife for himself. You have Andrew who is going after Gaia. You have Miles and Samantha. AM: Even Fats&amp;amp;#8217; dad is so self-involved with all his anxieties, he can&amp;#x27;t even deal. He&amp;amp;#8217;s the most selfish. He was unhappy with his life, and taking his stress and anger on those around him. LS: I think the generation divide is one of the most obvious things that I&amp;amp;#8217;ve noticed. It was just like, &amp;amp;#8220;Oh my God. Nobody understands each other.&amp;amp;#8221; The parents and kids have no communication whatsoever. And they think they&amp;amp;#8217;re so clear and that they should understand them, but nobody is getting any points across. AG: I thought it was really funny that they were mostly concerned because the ghost would post things on the political site, and most of the people that got pointed out were worried about their political standing&amp;amp;#8212;not the fact that someone is like, &amp;amp;#8220;What about his widow? What about his children?&amp;amp;#8221; It was all about &amp;amp;#8220;Oh my God. This is going to mess up my spot for the seat.&amp;amp;#8221; Let&amp;amp;#8217;s get back to the ending. It&amp;amp;#8217;s a huge thing that happens that involves everyone all at once. I felt like it came on a little quickly. Is that just me? All of a sudden all of this stuff was happening. LS: It did build surprisingly fast. AM: Howard&amp;amp;#8217;s birthday party reminded me of a Gossip Girl episode, where they bring all of these characters in at once for a big party. AG: I just felt like everything happened really quickly, and ended really quickly. And I don&amp;amp;#8217;t think I felt this strong sense of&amp;amp;#8212;not that I wanted everything to be resolved and tied up in a bow or anything&amp;amp;#8212;it just felt like it happened quite abruptly, and it ended quite abruptly. AM: I think probably the reason the ending may seem abrupt in this book is because there are so many pages devoted to establishing the characters and their relationships with each other. And then something has to finally happen after you establish all the characters. AG: So how did you feel? Were you happy with the ending? AM: I was OK with it. I think by the time I got there, I was ready for something to happen. So when it did, I thought, Oh OK, I&amp;amp;#8217;m involved in this now. They didn&amp;amp;#8217;t necessarily need to keep going with everyone. AG: There were a lot of dynamic characters and issues, but there wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t a lot of action throughout the book, so it was nice to have some big conflict, some big event at the end. AM: I feel like three fourths of the book was devoted to, &amp;amp;#8220;Here&amp;amp;#8217;s what this person&amp;amp;#8217;s thinking.&amp;amp;#8221; AG: I thought it was hilarious, with one of the scenes where they&amp;amp;#8217;re at the party, and the kids that are working as waiters and waitresses are all getting drunk at the back and making out. I thought that was a really realistic thing and funny even though it was a problem, with a little humor in there. LS: I think that was the only humor in there. SH: Well, you get the humor with punking the adults on the whole ghost thing. I found Kay humorous because for a while I felt bad for her, but at the same time, it was really funny because it was so sad. So, she was a little bit humorous. Everything else was dark. AG: It was interesting that she was such a strong advocate for these other people&amp;amp;#133; LS: But not for herself or her child. And Gaia brings that to her attention. She&amp;amp;#8217;s like, &amp;amp;#8220;I don&amp;amp;#8217;t like this girl. You seem to pay more attention to her than your own daughter.&amp;amp;#8221; SH: Overall, I have mixed feelings, but I&amp;amp;#8217;m leaning towards the not liking it. There are things I appreciate about it, but I wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t recommend it or read it again. AG: I love J.K. Rowling, so I read it in a heartbeat, and I kept reading. I was excited to keep reading. This is not going on my favorite books of all time list, but I thought it was nice to just be reading J.K. again. LS: I agree with that. I think if she writes another book, that she keeps the humor going because I did feel like this was so serious all the time. AM: She needed something on the other spectrum from Harry Potter. Maybe she&amp;#x27;ll come back with something in the middle. LS: I did like it. I did not love it by any measure. But I agree, it&amp;amp;#8217;s just good to read J.K. Rowling. AM: I really enjoy her style of writing, so it didn&amp;amp;#8217;t take that long for me to get invested. The whole time I read it, I was involved, interested, and invested in the book, so yeah. Harry Potter is still better, but I don&amp;amp;#8217;t think, by any means, it wasted my time. How did you feel about The Casual Vacancy? Did you agree with our sentiments? Rowling: Debra Hurford Brown"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/inspired/blogs/the-conversation/2013/03/glamourcoms-five-minute-book-c-1>