GatesyRead

George Orwell wrote six novels and three non-fiction books. Of the non-fiction, I have now read Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), and Homage to Catalonia (1938). “Down and Out” is – as it sounds – a portrait of poverty; and “Homage” the story of a man who sees a hopeful revolution collapse in the middle of a brutal civil war. Of the six novels, I have now managed (unsurprisingly) Animal Farm (1945), Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936). Listing these novels and books is only to say the following: I have read a bit of Orwell now, and amid the cleverness and the humanity and the bleakness of view, “Aspidistra” deserves a special mention (or perhaps, a vase) for being particularly depressing. The story is of a young man, twenty-nine as the story who has declared war against money (surely better than war against terror). In doing so, Gordon Comstock resists generations of middle class Comstock’s, who have done their duty and lived staid, stale