Forget all about Hogwarts and get ready to travel to the little town of Pagford because J.K. Rowling is making a drastic departure from anything related to Harry Potter with The Casual Vacancy, which is scheduled to hit bookstores on September 27th.
Considering how well the Potter series did, it’s a brave move for Rowling to do something so drastically different. The Casual Vacancy is Rowling’s first novel for adults, and I believe it’s her first novel outside the world of Harry Potter, although you can correct me on that if I’m wrong.
According the publisher, Little, Brown Book Group, the book is “Blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising.”
The synopsis for The Casual Vacancy, weighing in at approximately 480 pages, can be found below.
When Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock.Will you be giving Rowling’s venture into the adult genre a try or is this too drastically different from what she’s done before?
Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war.
Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…Pagford is not what it first seems.
And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?
