Plot or Premise

An opening on a town council creates turmoil in the community as various members jockey for position.

My Reactions

Described as Rowling’s first novel for adults, I was looking forward to reading it, and the first descriptions seemed almost like a Jeffrey Archer novel of small-town political intrigue. I got it as a hard copy for Xmas (or maybe my wife did?). And after she read it, I ended up setting it aside for a bit before coming back to it. Which turned into years. She wasn’t that excited by it, and so I didn’t dash to it. Now that I’ve read it, I totally get her reaction.

It’s generally depressing from one end to the other. Some reviewers described it as “darkly comic” but I didn’t see anything comic. Maybe the rape of a teen? The completely dysfunctional families? The poverty? The adultery? The death of children?

I couldn’t find hardly a single character to care about, more like a low-rent version of Friday Night Lights without any source or inkling of success by anyone. The writing is fine, just the story sucked.

The Bottom Line

About as pleasurable as a root canal