The language is not inspired, it is true. Metaphors tend to be perfunctory...Yet the novel does not feel like it possesses a tightly knitted plot. A reader can imagine some characters being dropped altogether without a collapse of the narrative. The novel also makes clear that Rowling was wise to stake her claim in the realm of fantasy, a realm that does not require a feeling for contemporary social milieus.

But after about ten pages of The Casual Vacancy I began to forget about all that stuff, and online rumors about how the book was amazing or awful or had lots of sex in it. I forgot about how I had three days to write a review of a 500-page book. I forgot about everything except the pages in front of me. Because I had come under the spell of a great novel.

The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling's first adult novel, is sometimes funny, often startlingly well observed, and full of cruelty and despair.

Rowling has written a grand novel about a little community where David Cameron's sop of the Big Society has been found out: no casual vacancy this, but a damning one. It is a very brave book, and one that will alter people's perceptions of her as a writer.

Much of the book I admired, even if I didn’t love. There were sentences I underlined for the sheer purpose of figuring out how English words could be combined so delightfully. There were incidents I immediately reread because the developments were surprising or genuinely moving. There were characters that I liked, then disliked, then liked again with reservations.

The reader can only hope she doesn’t try to flesh out the Muggle world of Pagford in any further volumes, but instead moves on to something more compelling and deeply felt in the future.

I wish, as a Harry Potter fan, that Rowling had succeeded in making the leap to adult fiction, but the only memorable characters are a toddler and a quartet of teenagers trying to grow up despite their severely dysfunctional parents. There is lots of talk about “shagging,” but very little passion. More eroticism ripples from the soft porn surfed by two teen boys on their laptops than in any of the adult bedrooms in the fictional town of Pagford in southwest England.

Would this book be published if it weren't for the name on the cover? Almost certainly. Would anyone pay much attention to it, and its message? Probably not. Is it worth reading? Yes, because it's become a talking point among readers, and unlike "Fifty Shades of Grey," reading it is not a painful experience. Is it worthy of awards? Probably not, but I'd definitely be interested in reading her next book, regardless of the baggage carried by the name on the cover.

Once you get your Mileses and Simonses straight and events begin to unfurl, it becomes a positively propulsive read. "The Casual Vacancy" may not be George Eliot, but it's J.K. Rowling; and that's pretty good.

The book is at its weakest when it is most angrily political, satirising what JK’s friend, Gordon Brown, calls "bigots". And the novel pretty much explodes towards the end, losing shape in its fury at the dirty, unfair England that we Muggles have made for ourselves.

Rowling clearly knows how to create a universe that's compelling, consuming even, but Pagford is no such place.

Rather, it is little more than a backdrop, a stage set, its lack of depth an emblem of Rowling's inability to engage us, to invest us sufficiently in her characters, young or otherwise, to reckon with the contrivances of her fictional world.

The Casual Vacancy is no masterpiece, but it's not bad at all: intelligent, workmanlike, and often funny. I could imagine it doing well without any association to the Rowling brand, perhaps creeping into the Richard and Judy Book Club, or being made into a three-part TV serial. The fanbase may find it a bit sour, as it lacks the Harry Potter books' warmth and charm; all the characters are fairly horrible or suicidally miserable or dead. But the worst you could say about it, really, is that it doesn't deserve the media frenzy surrounding it. And who nowadays thinks that merit and publicity have anything do with each other?

The book is quite punishing to read and the view of human nature it takes is more fundamentally lowering than that of the most cynical French aphorist.

Rowling has said the worst anyone might say about “The Casual Vacancy,” is that it is “dreadful” — and that she “should have stuck to writing for kids.” Well, here goes . . . Sorry, J.K.

“The Casual Vacancy,” which one bookseller breathlessly predicted would be the biggest novel of the year, isn’t dreadful. It’s just dull.