Coming Up for Air (Penguin Modern Classics)

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Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), better known by his pen-name, George Orwell , was born in India, where his father worked for the Civil Service. This second part is a lengthy exposition which feels so authentic and drawn from life, that once more we wonder about the two Georges. The final disappointment is that the estate where he used to fish has been built over, and the secluded and once-hidden pond that contained the huge carp he constantly intended to take on with his fishing rod but never got around to has become a rubbish dump. In fact, very little happens, it is largely an internal monologue, and few people bother to interact with George very much.

His abiding love of nature and the English countryside is as apparent here as it is in “Some Thoughts on the Common Toad”. He’d think it was a wonderful thing that a son of his should own a motor-car and live in a house with a bathroom.

Butter is going up, and the gas-bill is enormous, and the kids' boots are wearing out and there's another instalment due on the radio — that's Hilda's litany.

The present day sections pre-war are peppered with hilariously ridiculous rumours, which are funny in a ghastly way. An author and journalist, Orwell was one of the most prominent and influential figures in twentieth-century literature. Nevertheless, the publisher did bring out the novel without demanding major changes and it was published on June 12, 1939.

The beginning is blackly, excruciatingly funny, as he expresses his frustration about his daily slog. George Bowling, forty-five, mortgaged, married with children, is an insurance salesman with an expanding waistline, a new set of false teeth - and a desperate desire to escape his dreary life.

Usually Orwell’s female characters are more rounded (Julia in 1984), but the focus here is firmly on George Bowling and he certainly perceives the women around him in two-dimensional ways. One day, after winning some money from a bet at the races, George steals away from his family to visit the village where he grew up, to fish for carp in a pool he remembers from thirty years before. The subject matter concerning the autobiographical story of a very ordinary 48 yr old man consisted of his rather mundane upbringing and experiences from birth, through WW1 to 1938. There is no great story on offer here, no wonderfully empathetic characters, no revelations, so it is very impressive that we are held merely by the incredible, yet simple descriptions of life and are totally convinced by them.There's a particularly inspired moment when George, in the process of trying to escape for the weekend without letting anyone know, glances at the road behind him and imagines everyone in his life in hot pursuit, including Hitler and Stalin on a tandem bicycle: "There's the chap who's trying to get away! It reminded me of Laurie Lee's brilliant descriptions of life in rural England around the same time and his action in the Spanish Civil War.

The descriptions in the novel of a character who lectures at a meeting of Gollancz's Left Book Club, and of the meeting itself, were such that Gollancz 'could not have helped being offended by them.Written in 1938 and published in 1939, in real life it was only to be a matter of months before war was declared. This section reminded me very much of ' Cider with Rosie' (one of my favourite books), with the key difference that this is fiction. He usually enjoys Porteous' company, but on this occasion, his dry, dead classics make Bowling even more depressed.