Rowling knows us, but she doesn't love us

Rowling knows us, but she doesn't love us
Rowling knows us, but she doesn't love us
Anonim

J. K. Rowling's novel for adults, Temporary Vacancy, is not easy, not fun, but a very good book. That is, for those who can appreciate a reasonably accurate stomach kick. The Temporary Vacancy peeked into the life of a small town in England, Pagford, at the very moment when a member of the town council, Barry Fairbrother, dies tragically. The story starts from here, and Barry's death makes waves in a nice way.

This event does not only affect his wife and the four children left behind, of course they are also affected, but we know the least about this. In addition to - or rather instead of - the personal thread, the application for the vacant position begins, and the fight begins, which is about whether the tip-top little Pagford can get rid of Parlag, which is expanding on the edge of the town, the torn neighborhood, its drug rehabilitation clinic, the tip - from proligor children entering top school. With Barry's death, the barely existing balance in the city council can be overturned, which both camps are vehemently trying to turn to their advantage.

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There is no spectacular big story, in the Harry Potter, world-saving sense, just seven families, whose lives we become more and more involved in, day by day. The characters are also ordinary, but there are not many lovable figures, and there are absolutely none with whom we want to identify. But we can't run away, in one or the other we know ourselves, our friends, our family, our colleagues and our boss. It cannot be read like fiction because it is all too real to be outside of it.

The private little misery, smaller or larger weaknesses and hidden secrets of individual people are gradually revealed: there is a real family-wrecking bastard, a heroinist mother, whose teenage daughter fights to keep the family together, but the others are much more creepy, the so-called average people, whose lives Rowling digs into with the precision of a surgeon, and shows more and more about the deceitfulness of their relationships, the gap between the outwardly beautiful image and the real life.

As the story progresses, the decades-long unresolved issues of individual marriages become more and more spectacular, teenagers rebel against parents who hardly know them, private and community conflicts get mixed up in the fight for the position of a council member, and the means of struggle are will become more and more unworthy - and always perfectly understandable in the given context.

J. K. Rowling, or as many people know her, Harry Potter's birth mother, was certainly not in an easy situation when she started writing an adult book after the end of the series. But with The Temporary Vacancy, he jumped the bar, writing a ruthless but thought-provoking book. I'm also sure that it will never be as successful as the Harry Potters due to its harder digestibility. I don't know what Rowling has learned about people in recent years, but I always had the feeling that she knows us well, but she doesn't really like us.

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