Orwell's Novels Other Than 1984 and Animal Farm

Extollager

Extollager

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These are: Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and Coming Up for Air.

Coming Up for Air is my favorite of the four, the story of George Bowling, with a lavish recreation of his boyhood and an evocation of his (and the novelist's) present just before World War 2 breaks out. Worth reading for its own sake and also as an overture to 1984. It contains some Orwellian humor -- "a glimpse behind the Veil for a tanner a time," etc.
 
I absolutely love Coming Up for Air. It translates so perfectly across the generations, and still has enormous relevance today. My favourite too. I have a soft spot for Aspidistra as well. Burmese Days was one I read many years ago, and deserves a re-read.

I would support expansion of this thread to non-fiction works, as these works almost read like novels and are hugely entertaining. Your thread though and I don't mean to muck it up; perhaps you intend another thread for those books. For the record, I enjoyed 'Down and Out in Paris and London' almost as much as Coming up for Air.

I've not read A Clergyman's Daughter -should I set that straight? I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Glad you split out 1984 and Animal Farm from this thread, btw. These do feel quite distinct to me, and I enjoy them less than the books mentioned above.
 
I've not read A Clergyman's Daughter, largely because Orwell himself wrote it off as "Bollox", but I agree that Coming Up For Air is the best of the others. It is, unfortunately, still very relevant. I'm sure the world is full of people like Bowling right now, convinced that it's all going to go to Hell very soon. A thread for the non-fiction would be a good idea. I think his best work is his essays, even more than 1984 and Animal Farm. They show Orwell as something more than just a prophet of doom, although they're still pretty bleak.
 
Toby, Clergyman's Daughter is the only one of the Orwell novels that I've read just once, over 35 years ago. I wonder how it would strike me now.
 
Would there be interest in reading and discussing the novels here in publication order over time, i.e. starting with Burmese Days?
 
Extollager said:
Would there be interest in reading and discussing the novels here in publication order over time, i.e. starting with Burmese Days?
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There would, but if I'm entirely honest, I don't know if my TBR pile will easily allow it. I have Dickens queued up after James White...
 
Apart from 1984 and Animal Farm I have only read Down and Out. Need to remedy that.

A few years ago a friend of mine, who was working as a correspondent in Delhi, went on a pilgrimage to try to locate Orwell's birthplace:

Shadows of Orwell
 
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