FINISHED: The Casual Vacancy (INCREDIBLY SPOILERY)

I have an awful lot of feels about this book. So many feels that they cannot be contained in a spoiler-free review, so just... click away now if you don't want to be spoiled and come back once you've finished.

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Not only was this book written by Jo Rowling, one of the most important literary influences on my life, but it's about a topic incredibly close to my heart, the class divide in the UK.

It's no secret that Jo had a pretty awful time in life before Harry Potter and it's no secret that I went to the local comprehensive filled with a wide variety of people from incredibly different backgrounds. Let's just say I'm no stranger to how horrid life can be to some who don't deserve it.
So this book hit a few nerves.

We are introduced to a number of families intertwined by their involvement in the local parish council. With the death of Barry Fairbrother (a member of the council) this tiny community is plunged into war with itself, rich at war with poor, husbands at war with wives etc. as they fight about the local council estate and the drug clinic that serves it, but I won't try and explain the plot here, I wouldn't do it justice and there are a number of other reviews that will do it far better.

Let's just say that this novel hit me hard, and it didn't let up. The feelings of Barry's wife before and after his death, her annoyance with his preoccupation with the local council estate at the expense of her and their children, her grief after his death but her anger that he spent his last day alive with the wildchild Krystal Weedon, having her interviewed for the local paper rather than celebrating their wedding anniversary.

Krystal's life, acting as parent not only to her 3 year old brother Robbie, but to her own drug addled mother, fighting to keep her in a methadone program so Robbie won't be taken away by social services, is certainly not an easy one. The scene in which Robbie is left on his own on a park bench whilst Krystal and her 'boyfriend' Fats go to have sex was crafted beautifully as Robbie wandered around the park, passing many of the other characters of the book, all too occupied with their own problems to worry about the small boy drifting closer and closer to the river.
His death and eventually Krystal's had me in tears, the descriptions of the way she saw the world and what she had wished to do with her life were heartbreaking.

This book was incredibly clever and crafted in such a way that I cannot do it justice in this review without copying out the book and annotating it. There were so many little things about it that I recognised and that made me smile or cry. Well done Jo, how did we ever question your ability to write for adults?

10/10