The Casual Vacancy: why I'm dreading JK Rowling's adult novel While her millions of fans are no doubt doing cartwheels in anticipation of JK Rowling's new book for adults, the rest of us can be forgiven for holding back our enthusiasm. It's not that The Casual Vacancy - according to her publisher a "blackly comic" novel about small-town ructions in the fictional Pagford - will necessarily be bad. In fact - though I haven't of course seen a word of it: the publishers would probably shoot me if I had - I imagine it'll be as similarly well done and as well meaning as Harry Potter. What I find depressing, though, is the amount of attention the Rowling juggernaut will get - attention disproportionate to the quality of her work. I'm on dangerous territory here, I know, because an awful lot of people like Rowling's work. Not just like, in fact: many are obsessed fans - as opposed to disinterested readers - and will rain down abuse on anyone who doesn't toe the Potter party line. I've found the children simply love the books while the adults get defensive. So let me say that I've read the first three Potters and quite enjoyed them. Wholesome, decently paced and occasionally dark; you can easily while away a rainy hour or two in their company. What they lack is any feel for language, character and - crucially for a children's book - the unexpected weirdness you find in, say, Alice in Wonderland. I've always thought that Lewis Carroll and JK Rowling were each other's polar opposites in children's writing. The Alice books are riddling, disturbing, unexpected and memorable with a relish for language that means you can still recite whole passages from memory years after reading them. Rowling's magic is logical and plodding (much like her prose: can anyone honestly say they can quote one line?) and the pleasure her stories give is similar to putting together a jigsaw that eventually forms a clear picture. Even her concluding plotline in the Potter books about searching for Voldermort's Horcruxes follows this pattern. But if children like reading this stuff then that can't be all bad? True: but Rowling sucks all the energy out of other equally good but less straightforward writers. It depresses me to see 16 and 17 year-olds reading the series when they could be reading the great novels of childhood such as Oliver Twist or A House for Mr Biswas. What that says about the adults who are fanatical fans I'm not sure - but I suspect in years to come people will make a link between our plump, comfortable, infantilising society and the popularity of Potter. Rowling's union with Warner Brothers and those epic, dreary films have made her less the friend of the lonely child than the bane of the parent forced to cough up for cinema tickets, DVDs, lunchboxes and the rest. In short Rowling has turned herself into a brand and her triumph - like the X Factor - is one of marketing over quality. So this year forget Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies or whoever wins the Man Booker Prize. According to Jon Howells from Waterstones, The Casual Vacancy will probably be "the bestselling fiction title this year."