Literature / The Casual Vacancy

The Casual Vacancy is a 2012 Lit Fic novel by J. K. Rowling, and her first book outside of the Harry Potter-verse.

It's 20 Minutes into the Past, and the little English town of Pagford is in shock. Barry Fairbrother, a popular member of the local parish council, has dropped dead of a brain aneurysm on his wedding anniversary. Though everyone is impacted by his death, the ensuing drama and election to fill the casual vacancy^note In British (and Australian and New Zealand) electoral terminology, a vacancy in an elected position left by a chance occurrence like death or incapacity of the elected member Barry left behind reveals a town that is tearing itself apart over what to do with a housing project known as "The Fields", that is outside the jurisdiction of both Pagford and the neighbouring larger town of Yarvil. The novel follows a rotating cast of characters as egos are bruised and family tensions boil over, and meanwhile, a certain mysterious someone is posting townsfolk secrets on the local website...

The BBC have also adapted the novel into a TV miniseries, which is considerably Lighter and Softer than the book.

The Casual Vacancy Provides Examples Of:

• Abusive Parents: Simon and Colin, but especially Simon. Parminder too, of the emotional variety, to her dyslexic daughter, Suhkvinder.
• Agony of the Feet: Happens deservedly to Simon Price after he aims a kick at his son Andrew and misses.
• All Love Is Unrequited:
  • Gavin and Mary. To say that it backfires would be a massive understatement.
  • There's also Parminder who was secretly in love with Barry Fairbrother.
  • Colin and Tessa Wall are still together. So are Miles and Samantha Mollison who reconcile once Howard Mollison has another heart attack and is in critical condition.
  • Throughout most of the book, Gaia barely knows Andrew exists. The end of the book shows her warming to him and the two of them planning to go out once Andrew's family moves to Reading. She's fully aware of him taking an interest in her, as she notices him staring at her constantly, but this quote keeps the outcome ambiguous: "She was worth much more than Fats Wall, she knew that. If it had even been Andy Price, she would have felt better about it."
• All Women Are Prudes: Most sex scenes are depicted as something the woman endures for some ulterior reason. Such as trying to prevent her boyfriend from leaving her. Although the focus is on the women's discomfort, it should be noted that the men usually doesn't seem to enjoy the sex, either.
• Ambiguously Brown: Kay is described as having a somewhat darker skin-tone, though Gaia herself is described as white.
• And Some Other Stuff: The hacking scenes are not elaborated on beyond the vague description of "SQL injection", and Andrew and especially Sukhvinder taking great pains triplechecking they entered the code right with no typoes and no characters missing.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Behind closed doors, the Mollisons don't make much of an effort to look sorry for Barry Fairbrother's death.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Um, here's a hint for you Gavin: if you've lusted over a woman for years, do NOT tell her how you feel when she's just been widowed.
• Arranged Marriage: The town finds it fascinating that Parminder and Vikram had one.
• Attention Whore: what motivates quite a few people in Pagford is their desperate need for attention.
• The Baby Trap: Krystal planned on getting pregnant by Fats in order to permanently move both her and Robbie out of Terri's house. Interestingly enough, the "trap" wasn't for Fats - she fully expected him to flee. The trap was for his parents, as she figured they'd want to support their grandchild.
• Beneath Suspicion: Most of the adults in Pagford think The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother is another adult in town who's trying to influence the election and council votes on the Fields. Very few are even on the right track.
  • Samantha correctly suggests that the Ghost might be someone with a gripe against Simon Price, but of course her suggestion is ignored and ridiculed by her in-laws. We also find out from her she had one extra reason to suspect it was someone with a score to settle, as she herself posted an anonymous letter about Miles being unfit to run.
  • Howard suggests that the Ghost could be teenagers playing pranks when trying to downplay the Ghost's significance to a reporter.
  • It wasn't until Tessa realized that Fats was the third Ghost that anyone realized the truth, that it was mulitple teenagers trying to get revenge on their politically-motivated parents.
• Big Fun/Fat Bastard: Howard, depending on who you are. If Howard genuinely likes someone then his affability is genuine, if he doesn't he's just acting jolly and friendly to wind that person up.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Shirley. She's always smiling and acts all friendly to everyone's face while plotting their downfall behind their backs. At one point, she was even plotting to kill her husband!
• Bittersweet Ending: Hooray, the local election is over, Andrew and Gaia are making plans to go out in Reading, and some of the citizens of Pagford are starting to like each other! But Krystal, Robbie and Nana Cath are dead, Terri has completely broken down, Fats has become a self-loathing pariah, Colin and Simon's lives have been ruined by their own sons, Gavin is alone and miserable, Kay might be unemployed, Simon is still abusing his family, and Howard is still in the hospital recovering from his heart attack, his condition stable but his ultimate fate unknown.
• Book Ends:
  • The book begins and ends with a casual vacancy, due to Barry's death and Parminder's resignation respectively.
  • Also, Barry's funeral near the beginning, and the funeral of Krystal and Robbie at the end. At both of them, "Umbrella" by Rihanna is played.
  • Additionally, the Winterdown rowing crew gets a bookend. Early in the book, at Barry's funeral, the rowing team all pay up to give Barry a proper coffin, except for Krystal. In the very last scene of the book, at the funeral for the Weedons, everyone on the rowing crew pays for nice coffins except for Krystal, because she's dead. Also, Krystal is the only member of the rowing team who's absent at Barry's funeral. At her funeral the absent ones are Barry's daughters, whose mother'd discouraged them to go.
  • It's heavily implied that the final Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother post was made by its creator, Andrew Price.
• Bullied into Depression: Sukhvinder is relentlessly bullied by Fats, online and off. This causes her to be depressed and cut herself.
• The Bully: Fats, to Sukhvinder. Everyday at school, he makes fun of her looks by calling her homophobic or transphobic slurs, then spams her Facebook page with more of the same after school.
• But Not Too Gay: Patricia Mollison, who is mentioned in the story repeatedly and identified as a lesbian and in a relationship, but whose partner is only discussed, never shown on-screen. To be fair, she has left Pagford, the setting of the novel, long ago, is the black sheep of the family, and when she does come back it is only for a few hours and without her lover as Shirley refused to acknowledge their relationship in the invitation, only referring to the lover as a "plus one".
• Chekhov's Gun: Oh come on, this is J. K. Rowling we're talking about. What else were you expecting? Though to be fair, the way that the various guns come together in the final act is quite different from Harry Potter, and can best be described as a cross between For Want Of A Nail and Disaster Dominoes.
  • The watch that Krystal steals from Tessa early in the book. Terri finds it in Krystal's room and sells it to Obbo for £20 with which she buys a stack of smack and hashish (or Obbo just gave her the drugs for it, as Krystal notes he has been known to cut the middleman and pay Terri in drugs instead of money), which is heavily implied to be the same stash Krystal uses to kill herself.
  • The remains of the computer that Simon throws into the river cause a gash in Sukhvinder's leg when she tries to rescue Robbie, which leads to her parents finding out about her cutting.
  • The_Ghost_Of_Barry_Fairbrother, who wreaked havoc during the election, shows up one last time a few days later to expose Howard's affair with Maureen.
  • Andrew's Epi Pen is nearly used by Shirley to murder Howard, until he gets a heart attack of his own accord. It stays as a small source of guilt for Shirley, until she quickly suffers from Aesop Amnesia.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Patricia Mollison is mentioned early on but doesn't show up till near the end, long enough to drop the bombshell that Howard has been having an affair with Maureen before leaving, giving The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother one last bullet to fire.
• City Mouse: Gaia Bawden, who originally came from London and does NOT like Pagford.
• Cluster F-Bomb: All over the place. Terri and her daughter Krystal are especially adept at it.
• Comforting the Widow: Gavin, who had always been in love with Mary, tries to tell Mary how he felt just weeks after Barry's death. It does not work. At all.
• Contraception Deception: Krystal Weedon is trying to get pregnant as a teen mother to qualify for government housing (because she intends to take her baby brother along). Thus she dissuades Fats Walls, her boyfriend, from using condoms by lying that she is already on contraceptive pills.
• Cosmic Deadline: A Double Subversion. The election plotline that has driven the story thus far is resolved with 100 pages to go, and considering the large cast of characters, you're led to believe there will be a long, slow denouement. The book complies for a while with everyone celebrating Miles' election win and Howard's birthday, and then WHAM! In the span of 75 pages, The_Ghost_Of_Barry_Fairbrother strikes again, Samantha takes her Mrs. Robinson antics too far, Gavin's attempt at widow-comforting goes horribly wrong, Shirley finds out about Howard's affair and almost KILLS him before he suffers his second heart attack, Krystal decides she's had enough, tries to run away with Robbie and Fats, Robbie drowns in the river, Krystal commits suicide out of despair, and everyone gets their character arcs resolved and the town is changed forever. Hope you like your explosive endings, folks!
• Council Estate: The Fields, which is under the jurisdiction of two councils, though neither wants it anymore.
• Darker and Edgier: Edgier, and just as dark, as Rowling's previous work. The only thing that's less dark is the body count.
• Death by Woman Scorned: Howard comes close when it's publicly revealed that he's been having an affair for years. His wife doesn't go through this because he suffers a heart attack first and she later concludes that she wouldn't do it anyway; but it's possible she only thinks that to feel better about herself. To add an insult to an injury, Shirley didn't even decide to do that because of betrayed love - she analyzed the situation and decided that it would be better to become a widow than a publicly humiliated wife.
• Death of a Child: Robbie.
• Decoy Protagonist: Assuming you hadn't read any press coverage or the summary on the inside jacket (or the description at the top of this page, for that matter), you might be forgiven for thinking Barry Fairbrother was the main character at first.
  • Posthumous Character: But then again, with the way everybody constantly talks about him, he still kind of is.
• Despair Event Horizon: Terri completely loses it when she finds out Robbie has drowned. We don't see her reaction to learning about Krystal committing suicide, but presumably she got worse as her last scene shows her catatonic.
• The Dog Bites Back: Each of The_Ghost_Of_Barry_Fairbrother posts is a result of the attacked Council's candidates or members' abuse of his or her children (though in Fats' case "abuse" may be a bit of a stretch). Only Patricia doesn't post the entry herself, but she's the one who spills her father's secret to the teenagers who eventually publish it, after being treated badly by her parents at a party.
• Disaster Dominoes: The last 50 or so pages of the book could be considered this, with the Chekhov's Armory serving as the dominoes. It's astounding how everyone seems to be nearby or at the scene when Robbie and Krystal die. Then again, it IS a small town, and there had been another tragic accident around the same time.
• Doorstopper: At 503 pages, it's shorter than the last four Harry Potter books, but still quite hefty. On the other hand, its pages are larger than the North American/British edition of any of the Potters.
• Driven to Suicide: Krystal Weedon, after she realizes that Robbie's death was all her fault.
• Epigraph: The start of each "part" gives relevant quotes from Charles Arnold-Baker's Local Council Administration, Second Edition (such as the definition of a casual vacancy).
• Everybody Has Lots of Sex: ...Which is NOT a good thing at all.
• Expy: The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother posts seem to be this of The Half-Blood Prince's potion book both are mysterious entities in written form that are personified by the characters in an almost legendary way as if both are some sort of mythical being.
• Extreme Doormat: Gavin's lack of assertiveness means that he won't end his relationship with Kay, despite him having little interest in her. As Kay ingratiates herself into Pagford, it becomes harder for him to end the relationship.
  • Terri has a habit of immediately agreeing to just about anything. The one exception is being accused of using drugs, which she will emphatically deny, even if it's obvious that she's high.
• Fan Disservice: While sex is plentiful, it is pretty much always depicted as awkward and uncomfortable at best.
  • With some exceptions: At least Fats enjoys sex with Krystal (while her perspective isn't taken into account so often), it's implied that Kay enjoyed having sex with Gavin (although he mostly did that to distract her from their relationship problems) and Gaia is so heartbroken for having to leave her boyfriend Jean Luca she has sex with him several times before leaving to make it harder for him to forget her. Well, the perspective of the ones (probably?) enjoying it is either not fully sympathetic or only alluded to.
• Fanservice with a Smile: The reason Howard Mollison hires Gaia as a waitress. This later crosses into some squicky territory. At first, Howard seems a mostly harmless fat old man that likes to look at pretty young girls because he's not getting any at home. Then, once his affair with Maureen gets exposed, it becomes clear that he may have had a far more substantial agenda on Gaia.
• Fetish: Samantha gets hot at the idea of an Arranged Marriage.
• Flipping the Bird:
  • "I DI'N' DO NOTHIN', YOU PRICK!"
  • The British two-finger salute is mentioned a few times, but no one actually does it.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When we are first introduced to Howard Mollison, there's a lengthy monologue about how his weight means he probably hasn't seen his penis in years, and the community wonders whether Howard has ever used it like he should. His weight leads to his second heart attack in the final act, while his penis has been busy in the mouth of his partner, Maureen.
  • Terri's Mama Bear instincts, and particularly the fear of losing Robbie, are stressed to be one of the only things that can motivate Terri into kicking her drug habit. The last time we see her, having lost both of her children, she has crossed the Despair Event Horizon without so much as a backward glance.
  • Fats' adoption, Colin's OCD and Parminder's crush on Barry are indirectly addressed near the beginning of Part 2. It's subtle enough that a first-time reader will probably miss them and without giving too much away to spoil the plot for attentive readers, making this more of a Reread Bonus.
  • Maureen says something along the lines of "She's not the first wife not to notice something going on underneath her nose". A particularly delicious Reread Bonus because Maureen is busy giving Howard blowjobs underneath Shirley's nose.
• Funetik Aksent: Characters from Yarvil get a accent similar to Hagrid's, with plenty of apostrophes and missing h's, to distinguish them from the Pagford folk. See British Accents for more information.
• Generation Xerox: Samantha despairs that her husband Miles is increasingly taking after his father Howard.
• Ghetto Name: Krystal has one.
• The Ghost: Krystal and Robbie have two older siblings who were taken away from Teri by child services personal. Neither is ever seen, but what happened to them looms over the family and gives Teri reason to fear it could happen with her remaining children.
• Glory Hound: Andrew suspects that Fats took the credit for all of The_Ghost_Of_Barry_Fairbrother's posts when he only wrote one of them for this reason. (In reality, it was Fats' last-ditch attempt to provoke his parents' mercy and pity by way of Obfuscating Insanity; i.e. only someone "mad and ill" would do all of that.)
• Green-Eyed Monster: Mary Fairbrother admits to Gavin about being jealous of the way Barry paid so much attention to Krystal Weedon.
• The Hero Dies: To many Fielders, that's what Barry's death feels like.
• Hollywood Hacking: Surprisingly averted — SQL injection is shown mostly realistically (if vaguely), and is actually one of the first tools a real hacker would use against a website (due to its ease of execution and difficulty of authorities to trace).
• Hypocrite:
  • During a council meeting about closing the addiction clinic, Parminder calls out Howard for looking down on drug addicts while never doing a thing about his own weight.
  • Dr. Parminder Jawanda is accused of hypocrisy in her motives for her pro-Fields advocacy by The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother.
  • Kay cares little about her daughter's friendships and love life, when tearing her off her social circle in London, and when Gaia's now long-distance relationship fails, Kay says something like "some boy's dumped her" (though she regrets her words as soon as they come out). Did we mention that Kay's motivation for moving and dragging her daughter along, is a pursuit of a man? A man who obviously does his best to avoid her advances?
• Info Dump: A section called "Olden Days" between Parts 1 and 2 explains the history of Pagford, the animosity between Pagford and Yarvil, and why the Fields are such a big deal.
• Isn't It Ironic?:invoked Krystal has no idea what the lyrics to Umbrella mean, but she likes them.
• It's All About Me: Really this is a flaw that a lot of characters share. Gavin in particular exhibits this, allowing his girlfriend, Kay Bawden, to uproot her and her daughter's life to move to Pagford despite not actually loving her. Colin too, but his OCD gives him an excuse.
  • Kay herself is quite an offender, seeming to jump at the opportunity of a relationship with Gavin despite his efforts to communicate to her that he does not love her despite the extreme inconvenience it causes for her daughter.
  • Mary Fairbrother, Barry's widow, surprisingly gets hit with this. She was disapproving over how much time her husband spent on Krystal Weedon, the counsel, and his other projects; disagreeing with him about whether anyone in the Fields was worth anything. She is treated sympathetically for most of the novel, considering that Barry didn't seem to pay her much attention, but reaches mean-spirited levels when she refuses to attend Krystal's funeral, both forbidding her children from going and despairing that Krystal will be buried anywhere near Barry.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Obbo, the drug-dealing child rapist whose actions inadvertently cause the deaths of Robbie and Krystal, gets off with zero repercussions whatsoever.
  • Though not as bad as Obbo, this also applies to Simon. Although he loses his job because of his petty crimes, he gets another job in Reading and though we last see him in a sombre moment, it is left unclear if he will stop his Domestic Abuse of his wife and sons- Andrew at least thinks he won't.
• Kissing Cousins: Krystal had sex with one of her cousins, Dane, at 14.
• Kissing Under the Influence:
  • A drunk Gaia and Fats.
  • Same with Samantha and Andrew.
• Leitmotif: Rihanna's "Umbrella" appears to be one for Krystal and the rowing team, to the point where they request that it be played at Barry Fairbrother's funeral as the casket is led out of the church. It gets played again at Krystal's funeral.
• Lack of Empathy: Fats is deliberately trying to invoke this in his effort to be more "authentic." Some of the adults display this naturally.
• Lady Drunk: Samantha. She actually likes getting drunk at times too, because it makes her more courageous. This becomes a problem when it makes her courageous enough to try and snog Andrew.
• Meaningful Name: Another Signature Style of Rowling's.
  • Simon Price is obsessed with making money and getting into politics so he can save money. While the Price part is obvious, Simon means "reputation" as well as "to be heard" in Hebrew. Also, the name Simon is the root of the word "simony," which is the buying and selling of titles and jobs in the Church.
  • His son Andrew means "warrior," and he is one of the most aggressive characters in his war against his father.
  • Gaia Bowden. "Gaia" means earth and is often portrayed in fiction and mythology as mother earth and nature which is fitting with Gaia's natural, unspoiled beauty.
  • The drug dealer and all-around criminal, Obbo. "Yobbo" is a British slang term for a thug. It also sounds similar to "hobo", which his descriptions (grimy glasses, tattered clothes and such) resemble.
• Mrs. Robinson: Samantha has a lot of fantasies about the young members of a boy band her daughters like. Near the end, she tries to force herself on 16-year-old Andrew. Averted with her lusting after Vikram Jawanda who is either her age or older.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After three-year-old Robbie drowns in the river while his sister, Krystal, and Fats are having sex in the bushes nearby, Krystal is Driven to Suicide via heroin overdose. Fats, meanwhile, completely crosses the Despair Event Horizon and becomes a shell of his former self, even admitting to having sent all three posts and loads of other things as a way to get a punishment he thought he rightly deserved. Samantha Mollison, who remembers having seen Robbie alone by the river but, absorbed with her own problems, did nothing about it, decides to become The Atoner and join the Parish Council to see if she can keep the Bellchapel Addiction Clinic open.
• Naïve Newcomer: Kay Bawden
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead/Speak Ill of the Dead: Played with. The book notes that Robbie is seen as a martyr because of his very young age and the way that he died, while Krystal's suicide by jabbing a drug needle into her arm tarnishes her postmortem reputation, and she's remembered by all but the old rowing crew as a worthless junkie.
• Nietzsche Wannabe: Fats, who is obsessed with "authenticity." This usually translates to "doing whatever you feel like regardless of the consequences."
• No Guy Wants to Be Chased: The reason why Gavin prefers Mary over Kay.
• Not Me This Time: Krystal's done a lot of authority-defying things, but laughing at Cubby's breakdown when he's announcing Barry's death at the school assembly is not one of them. The trope is even discussed in Tessa's narration as the school counsellor is more than familiar with it.
• Opposing Sports Team: The rowing team of the Saint Anne's boarding school. Lexie and Libbie, the graddaughters of the chairman of the local council, Howard Mollison, go there. Both Howard and his son Myles, who is a layer, are rich and sucessful middle class people - which is the reason why they can afford that school. This team is contrasted by the team Barry Fairbrother brought to live: The school is an average school and the most important members are Sukhvinder and Krystal. Sukhvinder's family has an indian cultural backround so they are the only (explicetly mentioned) people of colour in the village. Krystal comes from the lower social class and has huge family problems regarding her drug addict mother and her little brother. All three of them - Sukhvinder, Krystal and Barry - are sympatic main characters and so is their rowing team. In flashback scene in the end Krystal pesters the Saint Anne girls as rich bitches
• Paranoia Fuel:invoked For the inhabitants of Pagford, the postings of The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother on the Parish Council's website certainly count.
• Parental Abandonment:
  • Krystal Weedon is fatherless and her mother is neglectful.
  • Subverted with Gaia Bowden whose father left her mother shortly after she was born, though she's in contact with him and knows that he is married, has some children, and where he lives.
• Parental Neglect: Ruth Price
• Parental Substitute:
  • Krystal Weedon sees Barry Fairbrother as this because she knows almost nothing about her birth father who is also named Barry. He seems to treat her nicely and saw something special in her.
  • Steve, Kay's longtime boyfriend for 8 years was this to Gaia teaching her to ride a bike and attending parents nights at her school. Kay latching onto Gavin is heavily implied to be a desperate attempt, after her split with Steve, to try and make Gavin this to Gaia.
• Pedo Hunt: An interesting variation, where the apparent paedophile's sexual thoughts about children are actually caused by OCD, rather than a genuine attraction to underage people. Regardless, when The_Ghost_Of_Barry_Fairbrother reveals Colin's secret, his chances for a council seat drop to zero.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Parminder and Vikram. Parminder says that their parents arranged their meeting but did not force them to marry each other.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Three guesses who.
  • Posthumous Character: Ok, four guesses.
• Purple Prose:
  • Lots of extraneous detail and similar padding.
  • It also gets invoked depending on who's got the POV spotlight. When the narrator channels Fats, the text becomes ripe with pretentious, self-centred Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness. When Andrew becomes the focus and Gaia walks into the room, don't expect to hear about anything else.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Howard Mollison succeeds in both getting his son, Miles, to join the Parish Council, and gets the responsibility for the Fields foisted onto Yarvil's shoulders. Afterwards, however, his affair with his business partner, Maureen, is discovered by his wife, he suffers a second heart-attack which renders him in critical condition and dumb, and he may or may not be aware that his wife was preparing to kill him for his infidelity. Also his daughter-in-law plans on joining the Council and getting the Bellchapel Clinic to stay open.
• Rape as Drama: Krystal is raped by Obbo, which causes her to panic when she sees Robbie with him and at least Obbo appears to be naked, prompting her to run away with Robbie.
• Really Gets Around: Krystal is referred to as "the school bike".
• Red Herring: Andrew's epipen ends up being one. Shirley steals it with the intention of using it to murder Howard after she learns of his affair, but he suffers a heart attack before she can go through with it. Andrew also doesn't suffer an allergic reaction which would require him to use the epipen while it's missing.
• Rotating Protagonist: The point of view switches constantly, sometimes mid-chapter. The main protagonists appear to be (in no particular order) Howard, Fats, Tessa, Andrew, Krystal, Ruth, Gavin, Kay, Miles, Samantha, Parminder and Sukhvinder. Krystal becomes the unofficial heroine for a decent chunk of the story, Andrew gets a large amount of focus too, and has a large influence on the story, but even then the POV still rotates.
• Separated by a Common Language: Americans were confused by the title because the term "casual vacancy" is not used in the States. Additionally, the two sides of The Pond use different terms to describe the election in this novel: "by-election" in the UK and "special election" in the States.
• Sir/Lady Swears-a-Lot: Plenty of characters, but especially Krystal, who uses fuck the way most people use a comma. Several characters comment on this.
• Social Services Does Not Exist: They do exist, but they suck. And the social workers are the first to admit it.
• The Sociopath: Fats, with his preoccupation with "authenticity" and cruel treatment of the rest of the cast. Only Barry Fairbrother, who only seemed to see the good in people, described his actions as "merely adolescent, and not sociopathic." By the end of the book, he admits that his only drive in life is to inflict pain on everyone around him. His actions include, but are not limited to: going out of his way to humiliate both of his parents, mocking Barry Fairbrother's death in front of his loved ones, bullying Suhkvinder in school and on social media to the point where she cuts herself and constantly thinks about suicide, making out with Gaia because he knew it would hurt Andrew, exposing his father's OCD and making the town believe he's a pedophile, and intentionally trying to get Krystal pregnant just to hurt his parents.
• Sour Prudes: Shirley Mollison, to the point that her husband has had an affair for more than a decade.
• Stealth Pun: The citizens of Yarvil are known as Yarvilians
• Take Up My Sword: Colin thinks he ought to do this for Barry's pro-Fields movement. His wife tries to talk him down to no avail.
• Textual Celebrity Resemblance: Gaia's boyfriend Marco looks like Johnny Depp.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Robbie got in trouble at the daycare for imitating a sex act on another toddler.
• 20 Minutes into the Past: It's unclear as to when the novel is supposed to take place, although there is a grave with a date-of-death of 2008 on it, Benazir Bhutto is apparently a topical reference, and Facebook plays a notable role in some of the subplots. The Nintendo DS is also mentioned at one point. Rhianna's "Umbrella" plays into it as well which was released in 2007, the same year Rowling released Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
• The Unfavorite:
  • Poor Suhkvinder. She doesn't do good in school thanks to her dyslexia, which constantly earns her the wrath of her mother.
  • It's also implied that Patricia is this to Shirley, due to being gay.
• Unfortunate Names: Krystal Weedon. Played with since Krystal doesn't really mind, and even joins in the joking herself.
• Unproblematic Prostitution: Dear fucking god, is this ever averted. One look at Terri Weedon should tell you that much.
• Unusual Chapter Numbers: The novel is split into parts, most of which are numbered^note an Info Dump on the history of Pagford called (Olden Days) gets its own section between Parts 1 and 2. Parts 1 and 2 are split into days, which each have their own set of short chapters^note except for the first Friday, which is one long chapter, and the chapter count resets to I at the start of a new day. After a Time Skip, the days-of-the-week numbering is dropped, and instead chapter counts reset after each part. Got it?
• What Happened to the Mouse?: We never find out who Fats' birth parents are. We also never find out what happened to Obbo after Krystal saved Robbie from him.
• White Sheep:
  • A weird non family example, but Barry Fairbrother could qualify as he seems to be really the only character who generally cares about the people of Pagford. He was really the only one who didn't see Krystal Weedon as some town bike or a bully. His allies Parminder and Colin are really only taking up his sword because that's what he would want, not necessarily because they think it's the right thing to do.
  • Patricia Mollison could qualify. While a minor character, she doesn't quite seem as bad as the rest of her family. Although, to be fair, her brother Miles is basically a good man, who just has little will-power and is over-ruled by his diabolical parents.
• With Friends Like These...: Fats has really gotten Andrew into a lot of trouble at times. When Fats tried to take the blame for all the Ghost posts, Andrew ended up getting a beating anyways since Simon thought Andrew told Fats about the stuff that was posted. Fats also hid a peanut inside a marshmallow and gave it to the known allergic Andrew for no conceivable reason other than to see what would happen when they were children, which almost killed Andrew. To top it all off, he kissed a drunk Gaia to spite Andrew when he found out that he was moving away.
• Woman Scorned: Although she later doubts she would have gone through with it, Shirley Mollison planned to kill her husband at one point when she discovers he's been cheating on her. She even brings the murder weapon home.