Coming Up for Air

In these reviews someone has compared George Bowling to Winston Smith. I think an even closer comparison would be George Babbitt. The similarities between the two novels is uncanny - the over the hill businessman, ditching the wife for a fishing vacation, the infidelities. Ok novel but pretty much the same book.

This is a book about angst. Societal angst at the ominous clouds of an approaching war and the personal angst of a pointless lifetime slipping away into an irrelevant old age. George Bowling is a moderately successful insurance "tout"... I love the dated English slang in these books..."tout" means salesman. Bowling's thought life is far away from his boring middle class existence in pre-war England. George lives in the... Read Full Review

A fat middle-aged salesman goes back to his childhood home to fend off a rising anxiety in prewar Europe, and the result is tragicomedy. One of the best novels I have ever read. Orwell was never better at creating a mood, an atmosphere, a state of mind, than in this book. It is engaging, witty, and powerful. I'm not sure I can say exactly what point Orwell (as opposed to the protagonist) was trying to make in this book,... Read Full Review

Orwell may be perpetuating the ultimate fraud here. His gift as a reporter may just be the talent he needed to...pawn off his own life as fiction.This fabulous novel documents the mid-life crisis of an aging and bloated insurance salesman who vaguely remembers a time when people weren't scared of war and believed that most of life's more visible elements would endure without end.This isn't a comming of age story, its more... Read Full Review

It's a shame that George Orwell's two best-known novels, "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty Four" are neither one his best novel. The peak of Orwell's fiction is this almost forgotten novel, "Coming Up for Air." Set in the last few years before a World War II that was obviously looming on the horizon, this elegant book memorably chronicles the life of George Bowling and his attempt to escape domesticity and the horrors... Read Full Review