“The Casual Vacancy”: Rowling on fire - Salon.com

“The Casual Vacancy”: Rowling on fire - Salon.com: “The Casual Vacancy” is an unforgiving novel. With it Rowling summons her formidable narrative skills to issue an indictment of contemporary British society, for which the provincial Pagford stands. It is fueled by anger and its final scenes have a genuine, admonitory thunder. It is not the sort of book that hordes of people would choose to read if its author had not also written a far more comforting series of stratospheric bestsellers. But perhaps the world will be better for them reading it. Rowling may not be an easy woman, but she uses her powers for good.