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Coming Up for Air (Harvest Book)
Coming Up for Air - Harvest Book
Author: George Orwell
COMING UP FOR AIR is about coping. Orwell hooks a character from among the struggling middle class and, close-up, lets us watch him wiggle. George (Tubby) Bowling is a "fat, middle-aged bloke with false teeth and a red face." He sells insurance, a task at which he grimly excels. The father of two ingrates and husband to a slattern, he dutifully ...  more »
ISBN-13: 9780156196253
ISBN-10: 0156196255
Publication Date: 10/22/1969
Pages: 278
Rating:
  • Currently 3.1/5 Stars.
 7

3.1 stars, based on 7 ratings
Publisher: Harcourt
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 2
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

Phunter avatar reviewed Coming Up for Air (Harvest Book) on + 35 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2
George Bowling, an overweight middle-age insurance salesman with a new set of dentures evaluates his life of quiet desperation in the England between the wars. He sees war with Germany looming on the horizon once more and anticipates a German invasion of Britain. In that stage of mid-life reevaluation that comes to all men he recognizes that happiness and contentment can be found in the simple of things of life - enjoying the countryside, smelling the flowers etc., so he decides to sneak off for a week to his old childhood haunts and fish a cetain pond that he always meant to fish but never got around to.
Well, they say you can never go home again and when he does virtually nothing is as he remembers it.
While this is a light-hearted novel it is written with tremendous insight both into the psyche of his protagonist (George) and the looming war with Germany. Several passages describes his fears of a post war society and those ideas were further fleshed out ten years later (after the war) in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
On a personal level, I could relate to his return visit to his boyhood haunts. When I did the same thing twenty years after emigrating and returned to my old haunts in England, there was a sense of bewilderment. Memory proved to be defective and while the town was still somewhat recognizable, so much had changed too and I realized that I was now a stranger to all that was once so familiar.
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reviewed Coming Up for Air (Harvest Book) on + 813 more book reviews
Chapter 1 is satirical and witty: just my cup of tea. Its a dig at the 1930s. George, our hero, finds himself the proud possessor of a boon of 17 quid, the result of a wager on a nag that broke the rules and won fairly. But I am disappointed as the next chapter begins the protagonists boring biography followed by two chapters onof all thingsfishing! Oh well, at least it isnt cricket. By Chapter 7 he is reading for WW I and by Chapter 8 is in it. Now for some fun with the wartime bureaucracy! That over, what can George do with his free quid? How about a separate (and secret) vacation back to his roots? Off he goes only to find that you really cant go home again.
reviewed Coming Up for Air (Harvest Book) on + 4 more book reviews
Great Orwellian satire full of irony. I loved it
reviewed Coming Up for Air (Harvest Book) on + 168 more book reviews
Truthfully I found this one a little dull but for the avid Orwell fan it is worth having and reading.


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