On Christmas Eve 1999, the United States Oceanic Administration heard an unexplainable sound coming from the coast of Antarctica. Twenty years later, a father and son compete in an arm-wrestling battle.
Review
For decades, feminists have been pointing out undeniable limitations to George Orwell’s work and life. As Deirdre Beddoe put it nearly 40 years ago, he was “totally blind” to the role that women “were and are forced to play”, and this insight is now being vividly fleshed out by other writers. Anna Funder’s recent Wifedom was a fascinating exploration of what it might have meant for Orwell’s wife Eileen to live in his shadow, while Sandra Newman’s novel Julia is an even more ambitious creation.
Here, Newman turns Orwell’s classic vision of the future inside out, and readers will find themselves gripped and surprised by what happens when the object of Winston Smith’s gaze looks back, and retells their journey into love and resistance. I began the book a little sceptical about whether a reimagining of Nineteen Eighty-Four would work as a novel in its own right. Fan fiction can rarely stand on its own, particularly when the source material is as precise and complete as Orwell’s. But Newman delivers on more than one level.
In the most basic way, Julia is a satisfying tribute act. Newman has deeply considered the language and culture of Orwell’s novel, which created its future setting by way of early 20th-century Britain, and takes us carefully through its familiar landscape. Indeed, these scenes are so well trodden for many of us that re-entering each one, from the grim windowless factory floor of the Ministry of Truth, to the fragile respite of the room above the junk shop, to O’Brien’s luxurious but threatening sitting room, can feel almost like encountering scenes from your own memories.
