The Casual Vacancy

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The sudden and unexpected death of forty-something Barry Fairbrother leaves the whole town of Pagford in a tizzy. Word spreads fast, of course, and everyone has different reactions. The main issue, though, regardless of what people felt about him, is the fact that he leaves a parish council seat vacant.

I was eager to read J.K. Rowling’s first book for adults, the first book she’s written outside of the Harry Potter world. Unfortunately, less than 30 pages in, I just had to stop. I had already encountered about 10 uses of strong language, a reference to masturbating, and a couple of other vulgar references. I took the time to flip through the book at random to see if that was isolated to the beginning, and I found dozens more uses of the f-word just stopping here and there on random pages (a couple of characters use the word five and ten times on a page). Regardless of whether the book is supposedly well written, I didn’t want to subject myself to any more.

I VERY rarely use this rating option, but I am resorting to it this time. If you’re not sure what I mean by this rating, look at my ratings page.

Rated: DIRT. I didn’t invest any more reading time, and if you’re concerned about rampant use of strong language, you probably don’t want to invest reading time, either.

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