Shifts in POV: J.K. Rowling's "The Casual Vacancy"

Workshop: Shifts in POV with Helen Hagemann @ the Fremantle Arts Centre, Friday, 17th November, 1pm-3pm.  Readings of J.K. Rowling's "The Casual Vacancy". Writing exercises will look at shifts in POV from chapter to chapter and within a single chapter.  For those writing short stories this will also be a challenge.

Venue: Fremantle Arts Centre, Upstairs Room, however inquire at desk. Time: 1-3pm. What to bring: Notepad, pen, laptop or iPad Cost: OOTA $25 - NON-OOTA $30 (ask for membership form to save). For information on joining OOTA and what we do, please visit our website ootawriters.com

 


On The Casual Vacancy

For two years, the working title of the novel was Responsible, until Rowling picked up Charles Arnold-Baker's work on local government, Local Council Administration, whilst looking something up and came across the term "casual vacancy." The New Yorker questioned Rowling's original choice of title, and she remarked "This is a book about responsibility. In the minor sense—how responsible we are for our own personal happiness, and where we find ourselves in life—but in the macro sense also, of course: how responsible we are for the poor, the disadvantaged, other people’s misery."

One of the novel's major themes is politics. The Guardian referred to The Casual Vacancy as a "parable of national politics", with Rowling saying, "I'm interested in that drive, that rush to judgment, that is so prevalent in our society. We all know that pleasurable rush that comes from condemning, and in the short term it's quite a satisfying thing to do, isn't it?" Rowling was also critical of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition that had led since the general election in 2010 saying, "There has been a horribly familiar change of atmosphere [since the 2010 election], it feels to me a lot like it did in the early 90s, where there's been a bit of redistribution of benefits and suddenly lone-parent families are that little bit worse off. But it's not a 'little bit' when you're in that situation. Even a tenner a week can make such a vast, vast difference. So, yeah, it does feel familiar. Though I started writing this five years ago when we didn't have a coalition government, so it's become maybe more relevant as I've written." Rowling went on to say that Britain held a "phenomenally snobby society", and described the middle class as "pretentious" and "funny". 
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