I've read 1984 and Animal Farm several times each, but this is the first time I've ventured on anything else by Orwell. I wasn't disappointed.

It does seem that Orwell got a good ways into this book and decided he wanted to write an entirely different sort of novel than it had been becoming up to that point. What begins as a fairly straight-forward satire on Christianity (especially Anglicanism) and provincialism abruptly becomes by turns a sort of mystery story, a proto-Grapes of Wrath, and then tries on some Dickensian dressing (David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, and Hard Times), almost dropping into a sort of Stand and Deliver/Dangerous Minds plot of "underprivileged kids make good academically," adding a bit of satire on non-conformist (fundamentalist) Christianity for good measure. The whole thing ends with a return to the state of things at the beginning of the novel, but with the heroine irrevocably changed inwardly.

Structurally--formally, I'm not sure what to make of it. Somehow it feels as though all of the elements of the novel (the prose itself, characterization, plot, etc.) are perfect but somehow mismatched. Nevertheless, it was (for me) one of those rarest of books that are enjoyable to read, mercifully short (one doesn't always want epics--even me--and one does tire of novels overly long by virtue of having been serialized), and still manage to leave one with a feeling of both intellectual stimulation and a certain blessing of goodwill from author to reader. ( )

Well, apart from experiencing the crappy lives proscribed for women in England in the 1800s, we also experience what it's like to be homeless and sleep in Trafalgar square. This is taken from Orwell's autobiographical"Down and out in Paris and London." Still, enjoyable. ( )

he second of Orwell's published novels.
As in the first (Burmese Days) the reader is confronted with the total powerlessness of the lead character. It is tough reading the life of a person unable to make choices. Dorothy is a Rector's unmarried daughter, and her life choices seem to have all been made for her. Life is a grind, and there are decades of it to come.
The plot is spiced up by a plot twist detour into penury and street living - but choices remained a distant prospect.
I'm enjoying the reading, but if Orwell hadn't written Animal Farm and 1984, I think both he and his other fiction would have been forgotten by now. ( )

Orwell notoriously categorised his own novel as "bollocks" in a letter to Henry Miller shortly after its publication — you can see his point, but Orwell even on a bad day still has something. The outer sections of the book may be rather routine and forgettable, but the hop-picking chapter is powerful stuff, and even the slightly clumsy James Joyce pastiche in the Trafalgar Square section manages to be quite effective from time to time. Orwell is able to write with conviction when he's talking about living rough, although there's a lot of overlap with Down and out in Paris and London, of course.
(The school chapter is also clearly based on personal experience, but oddly enough doesn't work as well: Orwell just comes across as too bitter to be convincing.)
So it's not a total waste of time, but the whole thing doesn't really mesh together to make a working novel. Probably because Orwell was weak enough let Dorothy be plucked out of poverty by a fairy godfather, as we knew she ought to be, but then couldn't force himself to write a romantic happy-end, so that we're left high and dry between cold pessimism and rosy optimism, not knowing where we are meant to be... ( )

A book to be avoided at all costs if you like Orwell and want to keep thinking he was such a consistently good writer and storyteller. On the other hand, if you hated 1984 in school and are looking for ammunition against him, this book is it. Plus point: the book is very short. ( )