lizalovereads 's review for:

1984 by George Orwell

challenging dark reflective sad tense slow-paced

Loveable characters: No

---

This is one of those books that I’m glad to finally have read but it was hard to get through. For having been written in 1949, shortly after the holocaust, this book feels eerily modern and like he was able to, unfortunately, predict quite a lot. I can see where the dystopian genre got inspiration from this. However it was still extremely dry when you’re used to modern fiction and the huge book within a book section could have been cut. I ended up reading a summary and skipping that part. The philosophy and existential crisis at the end was a lot to take in and the romance was so random and out of left field. I understand the romance served to show how the Party controls sex and desire and their romance was not only the ultimate FU but also gave them both the opportunity for the ultimate betrayal. Still I could have done without it. All in all I wasn’t the biggest fan and I fell asleep many times while reading but I’m glad I read it. Obviously I’d have gotten more out of it if I’d read it in a lit class.