A rich upper-middle class little town with a 'parish council' (and can there be any term more illustrative?) has a council estate(The Fields) fostered upon them. It brings with it crime and disruption but also a glimmer of hope for self improvement in the elitest school that they're now in the catchment area for. One person grows up in The Fields and seizes that opportunity to better himself and get the life he always wanted and he puts his life to giving other people that opportunity, arguing fervently on the parish council that they shouldn't cut the poor people loose, as a strong section want to do. And then he dies and leaves The Casual Vacancy.
The main purpose in this book is to explain people suck and life sucks. Everyone has a horrible secret and attitude, everyone has someone they can't stand. The nice people are pathetic and struggling to keep their lives together. And it's even worse for the people in the poorest situations.
It makes for uncomfortable reading, yet nothing that is written feels like something that doesn't happen, that someone doesn't have to suffer through, so I'm not sure that it's right to avoid it because it's unpleasant. Life can be unpleasant and by ignoring it we're creating an excuse not to help and get involved. There's almost no drive to read on throughout most of the book and it's so awful to get glimpses into peoples lives like this that it can be a struggle to read, but not necessarily for bad reasons.
But the books does reach its failings. It's not realistic that everyone has such dark struggles in their lives, but realism can be pushed aside, the books is showing us fictitiously something important to learn and having people with normal lives would have been boring and furthered nothing. Besides divorce is now a regular part of growing up and its fair to say that we all probably have bad moments in our lives (although a simple divorce would have been a breath of fresh air here). But it's so all consumingly negative that it destroys hope, it's easy to feel like there's no solution and no way of making it better which makes the book unbearably morbid and unhelpful to read. Taking everything onboard could negatively affect a life. It also makes things a little boring, its only at the very end where it stops feeling like everything happening isn't just establishing the central theme
Everyone has crud lives
A rich upper-middle class little town with a 'parish council' (and can there be any term more illustrative?) has a council estate(The Fields) fostered upon them. It brings with it crime and disruption but also a glimmer of hope for self improvement in the elitest school that they're now in the catchment area for. One person grows up in The Fields and seizes that opportunity to better himself and get the life he always wanted and he puts his life to giving other people that opportunity, arguing fervently on the parish council that they shouldn't cut the poor people loose, as a strong section want to do. And then he dies and leaves The Casual Vacancy.
The main purpose in this book is to explain people suck and life sucks. Everyone has a horrible secret and attitude, everyone has someone they can't stand. The nice people are pathetic and struggling to keep their lives together. And it's even worse for the people in the poorest situations.
It makes for uncomfortable reading, yet nothing that is written feels like something that doesn't happen, that someone doesn't have to suffer through, so I'm not sure that it's right to avoid it because it's unpleasant. Life can be unpleasant and by ignoring it we're creating an excuse not to help and get involved. There's almost no drive to read on throughout most of the book and it's so awful to get glimpses into peoples lives like this that it can be a struggle to read, but not necessarily for bad reasons.
But the books does reach its failings. It's not realistic that everyone has such dark struggles in their lives, but realism can be pushed aside, the books is showing us fictitiously something important to learn and having people with normal lives would have been boring and furthered nothing. Besides divorce is now a regular part of growing up and its fair to say that we all probably have bad moments in our lives (although a simple divorce would have been a breath of fresh air here). But it's so all consumingly negative that it destroys hope, it's easy to feel like there's no solution and no way of making it better which makes the book unbearably morbid and unhelpful to read. Taking everything onboard could negatively affect a life. It also makes things a little boring, its only at the very end where it stops feeling like everything happening isn't just establishing the central theme