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Reading Reviews

Book review: The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling

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I’m a little late to the party but I finally got my act together and read The Casual Vacancy.

I’ll give the elephant in the room a pat on the leg straight away and come clean that yes, I’ve read all the Harry Potter books. I’ve also read quite a lot of reader reviews of The Casual Vacancy so I knew enough to expect something completely different from Harry Potter. I mean, it’s a book about a vacancy on a parish council. Just how magical did people think it was going to get?

Opinion seems to be divided and I thought I’d be one of those people who either hate this book or love it. Having finished, I can honestly say that I feel conflicted. The whole thing had good and bad points.

I’m not one of those people who thinks that JK Rowling’s writing style is terrible. I enjoyed the Harry Potter books and thought her style worked well in them. I would describe it as ‘workmanlike’. It’s functional, which lends itself well to stories which revolve around plot and character. It also suits a magical world because when the things and situations in your story are fantastical or out-of-the-ordinary you don’t need an overblown swathe of purple prose to describe them. You just need to give the reader’s imagination space to work.

However, I don’t think this translated so well to The Casual Vacancy. The book focused on ordinary people doing ordinary things, and the ordinary prose in my opinion failed to lift the whole thing above, you’ve guessed it, ordinary.

The story arc focuses on the ‘casual vacancy’ on the Pagford parish council and the machinations of various villagers to get their favourite candidate to fill it. There are clear ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ – the reader is obviously meant to side with the candidate who wants to keep The Fields estate with its drug and deprivation problems within the boundaries of Pagford, along with its addiction clinic. The other candidate wants the sink estate to be someone else’s problem, and favours redrawing the boundaries in order to shunt The Fields off to nearby city Yarvil – which has plans to close the addiction clinic down.

There is also a third candidate, who seems to have been thrown into the mix for no real reason other than to make the situation slightly less ‘good vs evil’. Although you can’t root for him as he’s a complete arse.

The book starts off with the death which creates the casual vacancy and then settles down into a series of character studies. There are a lot of characters to get to grips with. Some people found this confusing; I didn’t find it too bad, if a little slow-moving.

The plot progressed by means of little vignettes from each character’s point of view in turn. It’s a good idea, but I thought it was just a bit too slow to make for a great novel in this case. Part of the problem for me was that I was never interested enough in the outcome. A parish council sounds boring on the surface, and when I read the book description I assumed that Rowling had teased some drama out of the tensions that undoubtedly arise on these kinds of committees, but I was disappointed. There was only one scene where the parish council actually meets, which I expected to be a pivotal point with some excitement, but that scene fell completely flat.

Some readers didn’t like the amount of swearing. It didn’t bother me particularly as I thought it was a fair representation of actual speech, but I didn’t like Rowling’s habit of writing ‘in dialect’ for the characters from The Fields. That’s just a personal preference; I’m not a fan of that practice in general. I prefer to learn where a character is from and ‘hear’ their accent in my head.

The characters weren’t very likeable and the outcome wasn’t a happy one, but I don’t have a problem with that. It was billed as realism, and realism it was. The teenage characters were well-drawn; the adults often stereotypical. The descriptions of life on the sink estate rang true (I used to live on one very like it!) and it was refreshing, in a way, to read about an estate like that in a rural, superficially idyllic area. Most stories involving hard drug use seem to be set in cities, as though it never happens in the green belt.

I don’t mind unlikeable characters, but I did rather warm to Samantha – getting older, bored with her boring husband and regretting the travelling she missed out on in her younger days following an unexpected pregnancy and shotgun wedding. None of this applies to me except the very first part, but I think Samantha and I could get on!

There is one character who is meant to be ‘nice’ – Barry Fairbrother, who dies at the beginning of the book. Although he’s painted as some kind of saintly champion of The Fields, I don’t think he’s fleshed out enough to become more than just a cipher, which is a shame because he is so pivotal to the story.

My verdict: the love child of Miss Read and Irvine Welsh but not approaching their talents. Pedestrian with some redeeming characterisations. Three stars out of five.

Categories
Help For Writers Writing

A fresh start

shelf of books

What’s my exciting Help For Writers news from my last post? Yesterday I started working for them full time in the role of Director. I’m thrilled to have the chance to focus on growing the business and I’m looking forward to developing it over the next year. I think we have loads to offer to writers; the challenge is to get the word out.

I’ve got so many ideas and things to do running around my head; it’s great to finally have the time and brainspace to get started!

Of course, my specialism remains proofreading and copy-editing and Help For Writers continues to offer those services either alongside digital distribution or independently if that’s what you want. Another element we’d love to grow further is cover design and I can’t wait to show off the portfolio of our talented graphic designers!

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Authors Christmas Help For Writers Personal

Happy New Year: 2016

Happy New Year! I hope 2016 is a great year for you.

I’m really excited about 2016. There are going to be fantastic new developments at Help For Writers! In the next few days I’ll finally be in a position to reveal all. (Sorry for the vagueblogging in the meantime, but I couldn’t wait to greet the New Year anyway!)

If, as a writer, there are any services you’d like to see that you haven’t been able to locate anywhere, or some way that existing self-publishing services aren’t fully meeting your needs, please drop me a line because I’d love to hear about ways we might be able to help make your life easier.

On a personal note, I’ve been in India for the last three weeks. As per all good cybersecurity advice I decided not to broadcast my absence on my blog in case hordes of rampaging looters descended on my house to strip it bare. (I needn’t have worried.) I spent a few days in Mumbai, then five days touring the Golden Triangle (Delhi, Agra, Ranthambore, Jaipur and back to Delhi again) and finally a week soaking up the sun in Kerala. This was my holiday of a lifetime and I feel extremely lucky to have seen some wonderful sights and met a bunch of super-friendly people. I didn’t take many photos but here’s a gratuitous Taj Mahal shot.

Taj Mahal
Taj Mahal

 

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Artwork Authors Midlands Writing

Meeting writers

Every now and then I like to get out of my cave and meet people face-to-face – especially writers, naturally! Today I went to the Leicester Writes Writers Meet Up (see, I resisted the temptation to insert an apostrophe and/or a hyphen there!) and saw a few familiar faces from the festival back in June, as well as meeting some new people too. I always find it inspiring to hear writers reading their work; this evening was no exception.

I have to big up Farhana Shaikh from Dahlia Publishing for organising these events – she does a great job.

If you live in the Leicester area and are interested in attending writing-related events, I recommend you join the Leicester Writing Events Facebook group, which pulls together everything writerly that’s happening in the area.

I don’t have any photos from this evening, so here’s a completely unrelated doodle.

Pen doodle that looks a bit like chains

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Christmas NaNoWriMo

So you won NaNoWriMo… now what?

I don’t like the term ‘won’ for NaNoWriMo, but if you got your 50,000 words down by the end of November, congratulations! That’s quite an achievement. Even if you didn’t make it to 50,000, it’s an achievement to have written anything. I hope by this time you’ve had a well-deserved rest.

I wrote a blog over at Help For Writers about what to do now you’ve done your first draft, or even just the skeleton of the first draft. Getting it from first to final draft might be arduous and it might be time-consuming, but getting words on a page for the first time is the hardest part in my opinion. It’s the same with drawing and painting – blank page syndrome. You have to get something down before you can see where you’ve gone wrong and start correcting it. I hope you find my tips helpful!

Triumph motorbike decorated with Christmas decorations
“Join the Triumph of the skies…”

I don’t usually feel Christmassy until the week before Christmas, but this year, because I’ll be overseas for Christmas, I’ve had to start all my preparation early, which has put me firmly into the spirit of the season. My Christmas cake is marinating in brandy, presents are wrapped and I’m looking forward to holding a belated celebration in the New Year.

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Copyediting Proofreading Writing

Society for Editors & Proofreaders

I’ve been accepted as an Intermediate Member! I danced a little happy dance when I got the email.

SfEP intermediate membership badge

If you’re thinking about using a copy-editor or proofreader and for some inexplicable reason you don’t want to use my services, I recommend you look for someone who is a Society for Editors & Proofreaders (SfEP) member. You have to prove a certain level of competence – including training and experience – before you are accepted as a member.

The SfEP has a great set of FAQs about using copy-editors and proofreaders – if you’re sitting on the fence, you might like to take a look.

SfEP membership email screenshot
I legit haz skillz!
Categories
Artwork Christmas

My Christmas cards are here!

Christmas cards in bubble wrap and cardboard box
They arrived!

I was worried that they’d be printed upside down or that the colours would turn out looking completely wrong, but never fear. Printed.com did me proud. Now I just have to get on with writing them!

Categories
Artwork Christmas

Christmas card 2015: Revealed

Finally finished my Christmas card 2015! I’ve sent the file off to the printer now, crossing my fingers that I’ve got the file setup right and it doesn’t come back printed on the wrong side of the fold or upside down or just plain weird.

house and trees in snow
Christmas card 2015
Categories
Artwork TV Writing

The Apprentice 2015: Write a children’s book

The Apprentice is my guilty pleasure and I’m not ashamed of it! (Well, says my inner copy-editor, that would make it not a guilty pleasure, then. Or not a guilty pleasure. Wherever you want to put the italics, that’s fine by me.)

Last week the candidates had to write, produce and sell a children’s book in three days. That’s right – one day to write it, one day to get it made (complete with illustrations and design work) and one day to sell it into stores large and small. The tasks on The Apprentice are getting a bit tired and samey after ten years of the same formula, but this one was right up my alley.

boy sitting on windowsill reading
(Photo courtesy of pixabay.com)

At first I was cringing as I watched Sam wax lyrical about Aristotle and the Snottydink, but by the end I wanted his team to win as I liked his enthusiasm and creative spirit! At least he was thinking about the plot and the overall ‘message’, unlike the other team who did have a plot, but one that wasn’t accurate in the information about honey production that it was trying to convey to its young audience. Nothing gets my goat quite like a children’s book that is wrong, wrong, wrong about something factual.

Sam seems like such a nice guy, I want him to do well in the process but usually it seems that the most horrible characters do the best on The Apprentice so I fully expect the final four to be Richard, Charleine, Selena and Vana, or possibly Brett.

I think the episode went a good way towards illustrating why writing a children’s book isn’t just as easy as A, B, C. I definitely have a lot of admiration for the graphic designers who came up with the visuals in just a day!

That reminds me, I need to finish off – start, actually! – the artwork for this year’s Christmas card… I got off to a good start with my watercolour sketch, but my first full size effort was doomed to failure after the masking fluid didn’t behave quite like I thought it would.

Categories
Artwork

The nights draw in

Halloween marks a turning point in the year; in England we’ve recently put the clocks back and the nights start to arrive earlier and last longer. The spirits of winter are breathing down my neck, so I thought it was time to get the watercolours out for the first time in years and have a little practice before embarking on the larger painting that will be this year’s Christmas card. So, without the aid of masking fluid, we have my first attempt at a snow scene…

snow scene

I’ll be a lot happier working on a larger scale, but the snow fits my mood.