casual or causal?

J.K.Rowling's first novel for adults A Casual Vacancy is so clever. The vacancy on the Pagford Parish Council, politically classed as casual, that occurs on the death of Barry Fairbrother is the catalyst for all sorts of problems and events in the troubled community.

This is a big book with a large cast of characters and an even longer list of social issues. The deceptions and intrigues that unfold during the narrative are circumscribed with past details and reflective comments and are plausible (well mostly, I did have a bit of a problem with the Epi-pen). What really stands out is Rowling's understanding of teenagers and her ability to create lively interesting young characters. Those chararcters' struggles with authority: their parents, schoolteachers, employers, are universal but in this novel at least two of them reach a reasonable resolution. The rest is social realism, some of it quite dark and some of it very worrying. Pagford is a microcosm of a troubled world and worth reading about.