"The Casual Vacancy" a book review

J.K. Rowling's book "The Casual Vacancy" it a tough one for me to rate and review, in some ways it was a great and even an important book and in other ways I wish I'd never have read it. I posted a blog when I was about half way through the book saying it was about local politics, relationship politics and a lot of broken people, what I didn't realize at the time was that all these problems were really a set up to the real point of the story. For me the overall message of the book, and it is most definitely a message book, is that we get so caught up in the problems of our own lives, be they real or imagined, that we miss the bigger tragedies happening around us. It could also be viewed as a political statement about how people get caught in a cycle of poverty and abuse and how there are people who desperately need help to break that cycle. Good message, and very damning, I easily saw myself in the characters who turned a blind eye to the problems of others or who were to apathetic and self-centered to care. Rowling does a great job, as she did in the Harry Potter series, of drawing you into this world, introducing a large cast of characters and getting you to feel for them, by the time I got to the dramatic climax I could not put the book down, she is great at doing that. The characters themselves are all a bit stereotypical but even so Rowling doesn't let them become two dimensional, it's  like she took a stereotype skeleton and added flesh to it. The one character that really gets to come out of her stereotype, or at least that we get to see beyond it, is Krystal Weedon; it's her and her family that I believe are really the main characters in the book, everything comes back to them. Now here's where things get tough for me, good, important message, good storytelling, compelling but yet Rowling sets you up for a terrible heart break. I can imagine that the tragedy at the core of this novel was the first part she wrote and that all the rest was built up around it so that we could see characters quite literally so caught up in their own little worlds that they don't take the chance to avert calamity. I don't know if this book effects everyone the same, well of course it doesn't, but what I mean is I don't know if everyone gets as upset by it as I did. I cried, the last chapter was read with blurred vision and then afterward I sobbed and spent the next few days in a depressed emotional state. In a way that's another tribute to the writing that this fictional story could affect me so deeply but in another way it really sucks because I fight negative feelings enough already I don't need a work of fiction to bring me down. I've had a rough emotional week, due in large part to this story, so I'm torn on whether to say yes it's good you should read it, or to say avoid this at all costs. Either way I know I'm not likely to forget this book anytime soon, the Weedons will haunt me for years to come.

Stolen Glances

I see you staring at me every time I walk into the room, you know I'm with another right now but yet you keep catching my eye. I like your jacket, it's a little flashy but flashy can be okay as long as there's something good on the inside. I promise when I finish with the one I'm with I'll give you a chance, see if we're compatible, you wouldn't be here if I didn't think I'd liked you, I am the one that invited you into my home. I got you at the Goodwill, I like other things your author has written, your flashy dust jacket makes you sound practically irresistible.

 I assume this is how all people feel when looking at their bookshelves, am I right?

Broken People

I'm about a third of the way through J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy it's a story of local politics, relationship politics, social injustice, and some thoroughly broken people. In one of the last chapters that I read a recovering drug addict has found out about a death in her family and it brings back memories of all the terrible things that have happened in her life, and Rowling made sure they were truly awful, all these memories come flooding over the character until it drowns all her resolve and we see her running down the street in tears looking for a fix, something to wipe away the hurt. Rowling is truly a masterful story teller, while there's not the magic of the Harry Potter world here, she still draws you in to this world she's created, you feel as though you know the layout of the town, you know the people; and when this character breaks you can't help but empathize with her.
   After reading this section of the book I had a talk with my wife, Araine, I told her that while I thankfully never went through the hell this character had, I still feel as though I'm broken inside as well. I know that there's really no such things as 'normal' and for the most part I've come to terms with my quirks of character and the things that make me different, but there are some things, some situations in which I see others behaving as complete adults that I just find myself quite unable to handle. I have half joked that the song What is This Feeling from Wicked is my introspective theme song. My childhood and my life to this point have had a few pretty bad times, nothing compared to the characters in this story, nor compared to the lives of quite a few people I know; yet when I think back on my life it is the bad times that seem to resonate more strongly. The vast majority of my life has been that of the abundantly blessed, I've always had love, safety, food, clothing, shelter, so why do the bad times stand out more, why does the broken feeling seems so strong at times? Araine said (I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this) that she too felt broken inside and that she too seemed to remember the bad things of life more starkly than the good things. So I began to wonder if that's true for all, or at least most of us; do all of you feel like you're broken people trying to make it in a world populated by "whole" people?
  To help combat this negativity I've started purposely calling to mind the good memories of my life, the times that I've felt happy and content, the times I'd never trade for anything. I have a strong affinity and interest in Zen and Taoism, although (obviously) I'm not always so good at putting these practices to good use, but as another weapon against negativity I've been trying hard to put into practice the idea of living fully in the moment, where the anxiety of the past and the future don't exist. To this end I've begun to wear my yin/yang necklace more often where I can rub the charm between my fingers like a worry stone to remember to let go of things, to pray for clarity. And while it's nothing new to me, I've come to a new realization of the power of singing to take you out of yourself, one of the reasons I love to sing so much.
    I can't wait to see how this books ends, it's building to what can only be a highly emotional climax. I'll let you know.

A Winter's Tale, read, finally.

 I can usually read through a play fairly quickly but this one seemed to take a long time to finish. Part of that is due to the play itself but I think an even bigger problem is the very bad habit I've fallen into of reading and watching t.v. at the same time, not really giving my full attention to either. This hasn't been much of a problem, generally which ever is more interesting I give my attention to while the other languishes; unfortunately A Winter's Tale just never really caught my interest. In The Complete Works of William Shakespeare; Abridged the writers lump all of Shakespeare's comedies into one scene because, as they say, it's all pretty much the same thing (mistaken identities, cross dressers, star crossed lovers and every one gets married in the end). I also kept forgetting who the characters were, I should have read the sparknotes synopsis first, it cleared things up a bit reading it afterward. It's interesting how our preconception of something flavors our expectations of it, for most of the time I was reading this play, I thought it was a tragedy (it certainly starts out that way) and when I realized my mistake I also realized I had been judging it through a lens of what I thought a tragedy should be. For instance I couldn't figure out the inclusion of the comedic characters of Autolycus and (the aptly named) Clown, but even within the parameters of a comedy they still don't seem to have much to do with the plot.  Now it's time to read and reread and reread Born Yesterday as I try to learn my lines, but when not doing that I'm reading Chuck Palahniuk's Doomed. Quite awhile back I decided to read one book off of each shelf of my bookshelf, 6 shelves total, with EmbassyTown I finished that mini-challenge and now I'm going to read the sequels and prequels I have on my shelf. Doomed is the sequel to Palahniuk's Dammed about a 13 yr. old girl who dies, goes to hell, and promptly starts to take over. In between books I try to read some of the ongoing titles I've got on my kindle, after finishing Embasytown I read one of John Wesley's sermons, one of H.P. Lovecraft's short stories, a Sherlock Holmes story, and, of course, one of Shakespeare's plays. Speaking of the complete works of Shakespeare on my kindle, I've now finished all the comedies, all the histories, and all but one of the tragedies, then it's on to the apocrypha and the poems (I've read about 40 of the 154 sonnets). I don't remember everything about all of them, nor can I randomly quote passages from most of them, maybe some day I'll start memorizing sections like Peter Hawkins in Ken Ludwig's Treasure Island.