J.K. Rowling’s first novel for adults, The Casual Vacancy, is finally out this week.
The story centers on a special election for a vacant town council seat that 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?”
The New Yorker interviews Rowling who notes two years into writing the book she picked up the standard British handbook for local administrators: “I needed it to check certain abstruse points. And in there I came across the phrase ‘a casual vacancy.’ Meaning, when a seat falls vacant through death or scandal. And immediately I knew that that was the title.”
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