A sudden death

A sudden death (original title: The Casual Vacancy ) is a novel by Joanne K. Rowling , which was published on September 27, 2012 by Carlsen-Verlag .

overview

The work has 576 pages and is about council member Barry Fairbrothers sudden death, which shocked the citizens of the (fictional) English town of Pagford. The vacancy that has now become vacant creates the material for the greatest dispute the city has ever seen.

content

The story begins with the sudden death of Barry Fairbrother, a council member and rowing coach at one of the local schools. The subsequent events of his acquaintances and their families are told. Several of the daughters and sons of these families use SQL injection to gain anonymous access to the local community message board and to divulge nasty secrets from councilors and candidates. Fairbrother was an advocate for the local drug clinic and the run-down settlement area the Fields on the local council , but the new election shifts the political balance to the detriment of the clinic and the settlement. 16-year-old Krystal Weedon lives in the Fields. She belongs to the lower class but was a successful member of the Fairbrothers rowing team.

Important persons

• Barry Fairbrother: Fairbrother comes from the settlement area of the Fields , but has worked his way up and is - except for his political opponents - popular everywhere. He is a member of Pagford Borough Council and dies of an aneurysm at the beginning of the story .
• Mary Fairbrother: Barry's wife only plays a minor role.
• The Fairbrother children: Fergus, Niamh, Siobhan and Declan are between 12 and 18 years old and are only marginal characters in the story.
• Gavin Hughes: Gavin is Barry's best friend. He is Kay Bawden's boyfriend but later woos Mary.
• Kay Bawden: Gavin's girlfriend recently moved in from London. The social worker is working on behalf of the Weedon case.
• Gaia Bawden: Kay's daughter is not enthusiastic about moving from London. She takes a job with the Mollisons.
• Terri Weedon: Terri Weedon is being treated for drug addiction at the local clinic. She lives in the Fields with her children Krystal and Robbie .
• Krystal Weedon: 16 year old Krystal is a rowing champion on Fairbrothers team. She tries to get pregnant by Stuart Wall in order to get her own house in the Fields and to get her brother, Robbie, out of her mother's influence.
• Colin "Pingel" Wall, assistant principal of the local school. He sees himself as a close friend of Barry. He is running for the vacant town council seat and wants to continue Barry's legacy in its spirit. He suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. The relationship with his adopted son Stuart is bad. He falls victim to allegations that his adoptive son publishes anonymously.
• Tessa Wall: wife of Colin and adoptive mother of Stuart. She is the tutor at the school and has regular meetings with Krystal Weedon. She has diabetes.
• Stuart Wall: Stuart, called Fats, is the adoptive son of Tessa and Colin Wall. He starts a relationship with Krystal. When Robbie drowns, he goes into hiding.
• Andrew Price: Andrew is Fats' best friend. He was the first to come up with the idea of ​​SQL injection to expose his father Simon Price and thus prevent him from running for the local council. He is in love with Gaia and takes a job with the Mollisons to be close to her.
• Simon Price: A print shop employee has frequent tantrums and then severely abuses his wife Ruth and children Andrew and Paul.
• Parminder Jawanda: Doctor and mother of Sukhvinder who pressures her to be as successful as her siblings. She is a member of the local council and supports Barry's goals, although the anonymous posting claims that this is mainly because she was in love with Barry.
• Sukhvinder Jawanda: Sukhvinder's family belongs to the Sikh religion. She is an outsider at school but becomes Gaia's girlfriend. She tries in vain to save Robbie from drowning.
• Howard Mollison: Married to Shirley. Mollison owns a deli. Gaia, Sukhvinder and Andrew work for him. He leads the majority in the local council and is an opponent of Fairbrother there.
• Shirley Mollison: wife of Howard, mother of Miles. She supports Howard unconditionally in everything he does until she learns of his affair with his business partner Maureen.
• Miles Mollison: son of Howard and Shirley, brother of Pat and husband of Samantha. Miles runs for the local council election and ultimately wins it by a large margin. He is a lawyer and shares the firm with Gavin Hughes.
• Samantha Mollison: wife of Miles. She runs a badly running bra shop, hates her Pagford life, has lost interest in Miles, and idolizes a member of her daughter's favorite boy band. Miles's mother, Shirley, is a mutual disgust she has. She seems to have a drinking problem.
• Patricia "Pat" Mollison: daughter of Howard and Shirley, sister of Miles. She lives in London and visits Pagford for her father's birthday party. Her relationship with her parents is obviously strained due to her lesbian orientation. She takes revenge by telling Fat and Andrew about the affair between their father and Maureen.

German edition

The German edition is titled A sudden death . Because of the confidentiality of the content, the translators ( Susanne Aeckerle , Marion Balkenhol ) had to travel to London specifically for their work. The German-language hardcover first edition was published by Carlsen Verlag and was number 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list from October 8 to 21, 2012 ; the paperback edition was published by Ullstein Verlag on December 2, 2013 . The complete reading by Christian Berkel was published as an audio book with 16 CDs in 2013. Deutscher Hörverlag, Hamburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-86717-974-4 .

review

Lev Grossman of Time Magazine wrote in his book review: "It is a great, ambitious, brilliant, profane, funny, deeply moving and important novel of present-day England, rich in literary intelligence and devoid of any bullshit" ("It's a big, ambitious, brilliant, profane, funny, deeply upsetting and magnificently eloquent novel of contemporary England, rich with literary intelligence and entirely bereft of bullshit ").

The Guardian wrote, "The Casual Vacancy is not a masterpiece, but it is not bad at all: intelligent, technically perfect, and often funny" ("The Casual Vacancy is no masterpiece, but it's not bad at all: intelligent, workmanlike, and often funny." ").

The Wall Street Journal wrote in its positive review: “Once you become familiar with the Miles 'and Simons' and events unfold, it reads very fluently. The Casual Vacancy may not be George Eliot, but it is JK Rowling, and that's pretty good. ”(" Once you get your Mileses and Simonses straight and events begin to unfurl, it becomes a positively propulsive read. "The Casual Vacancy" may not be George Eliot, but it's JK Rowling; and that's pretty good. ")

The Los Angeles Times criticized the book and criticized the fact that it failed to “conjure up Harry Potter's magic” (“fails to conjure Harry Potter's magic”).

Michiko Kakutani called the novel unfavorable compared to Rowling's Harry Potter series and said: “After reading it, you neither get the feeling that you know the background story of the Vacancy characters as detailed as that of Harry and his friends and enemies, nor do we end the novel with an inside knowledge of how their past and that of their families affected their present life. ”(“ We do not come away feeling that we know the back stories of the “Vacancy” characters in intimate detail the way we did with Harry and his friends and enemies, nor do we finish the novel with a visceral knowledge of how their pasts - and their families' pasts - have informed their present lives. ")

Positive reviews were created by the reviewers of the Associated Press and the Daily Beast , the latter noting that the book was a "page turner."

filming

In early 2015, a three-part television series based on the novel was broadcast on British television and released on DVD in June 2015.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/which-town-is-jk-rowlings-real-pagford-7922524.html
2. ↑ http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/story/2012-04-12/harry-potter-jk-rowling-new-book/54200224/1
3. ↑ Rowling's novel is delivered with strict security requirements , book report, September 25, 2012
4. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from 23 August 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ^ Lev Grossman: After "Harry Potter" . Time. Retrieved September 27, 2012.
6. ^ Theo Tait: JK Rowling: The Casual Vacancy - review . The Guardian. Retrieved September 27, 2012.
7. ↑ Meghan Cox Gurdon: Not at Hogwarts Anymore . Wall Street Journal. Retrieved September 27, 2012.
8. ↑ David Ulin: 'Casual Vacancy' fails to conjure Harry Potter's magic . In: LA Times , September 26, 2012. Retrieved September 27, 2012. 
9. ↑ MICHIKO KAKUTANI: Darkness and Death, No Magic to Help . In: New York Times , September 27, 2012. 
10. ↑ DEEPTI HAJELA: JK Rowling's debut novel for adults worth a read . Associated Press. Archived from the original on October 1, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 27, 2012. 
11. ↑ Malcolm Jones: 'The Casual Vacancy' Review: JK Rowling Cuts Loose From Harry Potter . Daily Beast. Retrieved September 27, 2012.