Characters in The Casual Vacancy

Supporting characters

• Barry Fairbrother

  A parish councillor whose sudden death sets the plot in motion.

• Howard Mollison

  A prominent local shop owner and councillor at the center of the town's divisions.

• Shirley Mollison

  Howard's wife, whose sycophantic support of her husband masks a capacity for vindictive action that emerges as the plot tightens.

• Tessa Wall

  The school guidance counsellor and wife of the local vicar, whose exhausted compassion for families like Krystal's represents the novel's most sympathetic professional voice.

• Sukhvinder Jawanda

  A teenager at Pagford's school who faces bullying and self-harm in a parallel coming-of-age story that exposes the novel's adult dramas from below.

• Krystal Weedon

  A teenager from the town's poorest estate whose fate becomes central to the story.