I just finished reading “The Casual Vacancy,” J.K. Rowling’s first post-Potter novel, and I hope it’s not the last.
It didn’t grab me at first the way the Harry Potter books did, but that’s probably just down to the different genres – I’m a sucker for kid’s books. Sure, shame about Barry Fairbrother dropping dead like that (and Rowling is a master of death in the 1st chapter – my favorite opening chapter in the Harry Potter series, I forget which book, Order of the Phoenix, maybe?-was the one where the old caretaker wanders in on a secret meeting of Voldemort and is killed by Nagini, the serpent), but at first I found the introductions of the cast of characters to be a bit tedious, and I didn’t really know where it was going. In short, the Magic wasn’t there.
Pagford- everybody ‘ere is effin’ mental
So, I was reading it when I was on the metro or the tram, but after I was halfway through it, the story had started to get interesting and this afternoon I sat down and finished it, totally forgetting where I was and somewhat surprised and a bit empty when it suddenly ended.
Rowling is good at creating worlds. Pagford is her next Hogwarts.
She is good at creating huge casts of characters and making them believable. Even some of the truly despicable characters, like Howard and Shirley Mollison, or Terri Weedon, I wound up sympathizing with on some level. (Not Simon Price, though. He was just a shit.)
So, in answer to the question “Will J.K. Rowling make the transition to writing books for adults” (I don’t want to say “adult books” because you might get the wrong idea), the answer is “Yes, yes she will.”
She’ll always be most famous for Harry Potter, but I look forward to seeing more books from her.
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