Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Harcourt (1969), Paperback, 278
Description
George Bowling, the hero of this comic novel, is a middle-aged insurance salesman who lives in an average English suburban row house with a wife and two children. One day, after winning some money from a bet, he goes back to the village where he grew up, to fish for carp in a pool he remembers from thirty years before. The pool, alas, is gone, the village has changed beyond recognition, and the principal event of his holiday is an accidental bombing by the RAF.
User reviews
LibraryThing member john257hopper
This is my second read of this wonderful 1938 novel, possibly my favourite Orwell novel (along with the very different and later 1984), and indeed one of my favourite novels of all time. George Bowling is a lower middle class middle aged man with a nagging and remorselessly downbeat wife and two
Taking advantage of a win of as much as £17 in a bet, he takes off in his car with his new found riches to enjoy a week on his own to stay in a hotel and enjoy good food and drink and look up the town where he grew up. He searches, but he finds it unrecognisable - swallowed up in a larger urban area where his family and way of life are forgotten. He doesn't rail against this, it is more of a bittersweet resignation to the inevitability of change. Mixed with these emotions is his fear of the impending war with Hitler's Germany changing the whole nature of existence: "The very idea of sitting all day under a willow tree beside a quiet pool — and being able to find a quiet pool to sit beside — belongs to the time before the war, before the radio, before aeroplanes, before Hitler". There is a really striking and often quite bleak and stifling atmosphere of the impending war and the totalitarian future that George believes will be that war's inevitable follow up, reflecting Orwell's fear of the twin totalitarian extremes of fascism and communism. One can almost see George Bowling transmuting into 1984's Winston Smith. He says: "I’ve enough sense to see that the old life we’re used to is being sawn off at the roots. I can feel it happening. I can see the war that’s coming and I can see the after-war, the food-queues and the secret police and the loudspeakers telling you what to think". This description may make this sound like a bleak novel but it is anything but - it is a humorous and bittersweet story, and is truly wonderful, especially if you're a middle aged man yourself!
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annoying children, and the novel is essentially his search, ultimately fruitless, to recapture the simplicity and happiness of his youth in a small town before the Great War. He recognises life was far from perfect then, with his parents' generation facing the potential threat of the workhouse if their shop went out of business, but he is searching for the elusive inner happiness and peace that I guess many of us search for all our lives and may sometimes find: "what was it that people had in those days? A feeling of security, even when they weren’t secure. More exactly, it was a feeling of continuity. All of them knew they’d got to die, and I suppose a few of them knew they were going to go bankrupt, but what they didn’t know was that the order of things could change. Whatever might happen to themselves, things would go on as they'd known them." Taking advantage of a win of as much as £17 in a bet, he takes off in his car with his new found riches to enjoy a week on his own to stay in a hotel and enjoy good food and drink and look up the town where he grew up. He searches, but he finds it unrecognisable - swallowed up in a larger urban area where his family and way of life are forgotten. He doesn't rail against this, it is more of a bittersweet resignation to the inevitability of change. Mixed with these emotions is his fear of the impending war with Hitler's Germany changing the whole nature of existence: "The very idea of sitting all day under a willow tree beside a quiet pool — and being able to find a quiet pool to sit beside — belongs to the time before the war, before the radio, before aeroplanes, before Hitler". There is a really striking and often quite bleak and stifling atmosphere of the impending war and the totalitarian future that George believes will be that war's inevitable follow up, reflecting Orwell's fear of the twin totalitarian extremes of fascism and communism. One can almost see George Bowling transmuting into 1984's Winston Smith. He says: "I’ve enough sense to see that the old life we’re used to is being sawn off at the roots. I can feel it happening. I can see the war that’s coming and I can see the after-war, the food-queues and the secret police and the loudspeakers telling you what to think". This description may make this sound like a bleak novel but it is anything but - it is a humorous and bittersweet story, and is truly wonderful, especially if you're a middle aged man yourself!
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LibraryThing member john257hopper
An absolutely wonderful evocative novel, full of witty and poignant observations about lower middle class life between the wars, the fear of war (this was published in 1939), the securities and horrors of cosy family life and the power of nostalgia and the "golden age" myth of one's youth. Orwell's
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fear of war is that of the triumph of totalitarianism in Britain, and his descriptions of what he fears this will be like clearly presage his descriptions of Aistrip One in 1984. Despite this horror, there are many laugh out loud moments. This should be better known and more widely read than it is. Show Less
LibraryThing member PilgrimJess
"Life's here to be lived, and if we're going to be in the soup next week-well, next week is a long way off."
'Coming Up for Air' is effectively a social document echoing Orwell’s socialist views and tells the story of Fatty George Bowling, a middle-aged man who lives with his wife, Hilda, and
George feels trapped on Ellesmere Road and in particular by the ironically named Cheerful Credit Building Society and it's owner Sir Herbert Crum. George believes that each deceives the inhabitants in to thinking they own their houses when in reality they don't expanding on what Orwell regards as the upper classes ruling over the working class proletariat and continuing the socialist ideals about fairness and equality first muted in his earlier novel The Road to Wigan Pier. Similarly, George and Hilda attend a meeting on fascism, clearly drawing parallels with what was happening on mainland Europe at the time.
After introducing the Bowlings and the world they live in, readers are transported to George's childhood life in Lower Binfield, where he remembers how ‘it was summer all the year round’, his father’s seed business, his mother’s cooking and in particular his love for fishing. Childhood for George is ‘ a feeling of knowing everything and fearing nothing’, reminding us that we are all nostalgic at times and how we sometimes dream of recapturing past glories but as George informs us, ‘There’s time for everything except the things worth doing’. George eventually enlists for the army and after being demobbed moves away from Lower Binfield.
Twenty-five years later George returns, without telling Hilda, to spend a week in Lower Binfield but finds that the streets that he remembers has been swallowed up by a much larger town as is no longer recognisable, where virtually all his childhood shops have changed hands and no one remembers him of his family, including the local vicar and his first love Elsie Flowers’ whose ‘deeply feminine’ look had disappeared and she was now ‘a fat old woman muddling about a frowzy little shop’. But most importantly to George is the fact that the pond at Binfield House where he once saw some huge carp which he had always dreamt of catching had become a rubbish dump. Realising that the last piece of his childhood has been ravaged by time George returns home only to find out that Hilda has discovered his lies about his whereabouts.
George is a likeable if highly flawed character whereas the female characters are strictly two-dimensional but this shouldn't really detract from this book. Orwell uses irony to portray how the effects of an earlier war has changed society but also reminds us that actions have consequences in our personal lives as well and no matter how much we wish it, it is impossible to turn back the clock. Similarly he reminds us that the future is largely out of our control and instead we should make the most of the present. Whilst this book may not be of the same calibre as his more famous books, Animal Farm and 1984, it does how forward thinking much of his writing was and shows that many Orwellian themes and ideas are still applicable today, as such I feel that it still deserves to be read.
'Coming Up for Air' is effectively a social document echoing Orwell’s socialist views and tells the story of Fatty George Bowling, a middle-aged man who lives with his wife, Hilda, and
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their two children on Ellesmere Road, London. George is a very ordinary man in a safe insurance job but who is fearful of the future in which he sees the approaching war. George feels trapped on Ellesmere Road and in particular by the ironically named Cheerful Credit Building Society and it's owner Sir Herbert Crum. George believes that each deceives the inhabitants in to thinking they own their houses when in reality they don't expanding on what Orwell regards as the upper classes ruling over the working class proletariat and continuing the socialist ideals about fairness and equality first muted in his earlier novel The Road to Wigan Pier. Similarly, George and Hilda attend a meeting on fascism, clearly drawing parallels with what was happening on mainland Europe at the time.
After introducing the Bowlings and the world they live in, readers are transported to George's childhood life in Lower Binfield, where he remembers how ‘it was summer all the year round’, his father’s seed business, his mother’s cooking and in particular his love for fishing. Childhood for George is ‘ a feeling of knowing everything and fearing nothing’, reminding us that we are all nostalgic at times and how we sometimes dream of recapturing past glories but as George informs us, ‘There’s time for everything except the things worth doing’. George eventually enlists for the army and after being demobbed moves away from Lower Binfield.
Twenty-five years later George returns, without telling Hilda, to spend a week in Lower Binfield but finds that the streets that he remembers has been swallowed up by a much larger town as is no longer recognisable, where virtually all his childhood shops have changed hands and no one remembers him of his family, including the local vicar and his first love Elsie Flowers’ whose ‘deeply feminine’ look had disappeared and she was now ‘a fat old woman muddling about a frowzy little shop’. But most importantly to George is the fact that the pond at Binfield House where he once saw some huge carp which he had always dreamt of catching had become a rubbish dump. Realising that the last piece of his childhood has been ravaged by time George returns home only to find out that Hilda has discovered his lies about his whereabouts.
George is a likeable if highly flawed character whereas the female characters are strictly two-dimensional but this shouldn't really detract from this book. Orwell uses irony to portray how the effects of an earlier war has changed society but also reminds us that actions have consequences in our personal lives as well and no matter how much we wish it, it is impossible to turn back the clock. Similarly he reminds us that the future is largely out of our control and instead we should make the most of the present. Whilst this book may not be of the same calibre as his more famous books, Animal Farm and 1984, it does how forward thinking much of his writing was and shows that many Orwellian themes and ideas are still applicable today, as such I feel that it still deserves to be read.
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LibraryThing member tibobi
The Short of It:
An odd little book, but what a treasure.
The Rest of It:
I’m not sure why I enjoy Orwell’s writing so much. It may be his pessimistic take on what we call civilization, or it could be that I am a bit of a realist. I see things as they are…no imagined glory here. The same can
There’s a bit of a problem though. George is married to Hilda and lives the typical suburban lifestyle that includes a house and two kids. George doesn’t seem to want to remember this though. The day-to-day that George shares with us is anything but dreadful, but the normalcy, the lack of excitement is a constant thorn in his side. With war looming in the distance, he reminisces on how life was, and how it could be.
"There’s time for everything except the things worth doing. Think of something you really care about. Then add hour to hour and calculate the fraction of your life that you’ve actually spent in doing it. And then calculate the time you’ve spent on things like shaving, riding to and fro on buses, waiting in railway junctions, swapping dirty stories and reading the newspapers." [Page 93]
But Lower Binfield is not what it used to be. As you can imagine, progress can be a wicked thing to behold and George’s quaint hometown is not so little anymore and even the things that haven’t changed, seem to be different twenty years later.
"It’s a queer experience to go over a bit of country that you haven’t seen in twenty years. You remember it in great detail, and you remember it all wrong." [Page 209]
To add insult to injury, the people are not the same either as evidenced by this account where he happens to run into an old flame.
"Only twenty-four years, and the girl I’d known, with her milky-white skin and red mouth and kind of dull-gold hair, had turned into this great, round-shouldered hag, shambling along on twisted heels." [Page 243]
What’s wonderful about this book is that everyone can relate to it. Things change. We change. There is a “George” in all of us and Orwell’s wry, sarcastic take on progress is at times very funny. This isn’t an account of a man falling apart. There is no mid-life crises per se, but what we view through George’s eyes is a quiet realization that one cannot recapture their youth and that time marches on whether or not we accept it.
If you enjoy “day in the life” type stories you will enjoy this one.
An odd little book, but what a treasure.
The Rest of It:
I’m not sure why I enjoy Orwell’s writing so much. It may be his pessimistic take on what we call civilization, or it could be that I am a bit of a realist. I see things as they are…no imagined glory here. The same can
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be said for this book. Coming Up for Air is a novel about George Bowling. He’s a married, middle-aged man who after winning a horse race, decides to visit his hometown to re-live the years of his youth. There’s a bit of a problem though. George is married to Hilda and lives the typical suburban lifestyle that includes a house and two kids. George doesn’t seem to want to remember this though. The day-to-day that George shares with us is anything but dreadful, but the normalcy, the lack of excitement is a constant thorn in his side. With war looming in the distance, he reminisces on how life was, and how it could be.
"There’s time for everything except the things worth doing. Think of something you really care about. Then add hour to hour and calculate the fraction of your life that you’ve actually spent in doing it. And then calculate the time you’ve spent on things like shaving, riding to and fro on buses, waiting in railway junctions, swapping dirty stories and reading the newspapers." [Page 93]
But Lower Binfield is not what it used to be. As you can imagine, progress can be a wicked thing to behold and George’s quaint hometown is not so little anymore and even the things that haven’t changed, seem to be different twenty years later.
"It’s a queer experience to go over a bit of country that you haven’t seen in twenty years. You remember it in great detail, and you remember it all wrong." [Page 209]
To add insult to injury, the people are not the same either as evidenced by this account where he happens to run into an old flame.
"Only twenty-four years, and the girl I’d known, with her milky-white skin and red mouth and kind of dull-gold hair, had turned into this great, round-shouldered hag, shambling along on twisted heels." [Page 243]
What’s wonderful about this book is that everyone can relate to it. Things change. We change. There is a “George” in all of us and Orwell’s wry, sarcastic take on progress is at times very funny. This isn’t an account of a man falling apart. There is no mid-life crises per se, but what we view through George’s eyes is a quiet realization that one cannot recapture their youth and that time marches on whether or not we accept it.
If you enjoy “day in the life” type stories you will enjoy this one.
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LibraryThing member whiteriot
When I was 15 and living in 1970 Essex suburbia my English teacher chose this Orwell novel (not Animal Farm or 1984) and made us read it. It has remained fresh in my mind throughout my life and when I reached 45 I thought it would be a good idea to check back in with George Bowling. This rates as
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one of my most loved books, funny, moving and inspiring. Show Less
LibraryThing member eglinton
Orwell drops the simpering sensibilities and experimental narration of the earlier novels, developing here the vigorous delivery of plain words and thoughts so effective in his later essays and in 'Animal Farm' and '1984'. A suburban clerk everyman looks back nostalgically to an already distant
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Edwardian golden age, and too to the timeless pleasures of boyhood; but also prefigures the war and upheaval that's round the corner (the book came out in 1939). A memorable portrayal, and a snapshot of the bullish spirit of the English, as well as their chippiness, the latent fear and tension within the bland calm and continuity of the age (that reliable and comforting social order still familiar in the satirical world of Profesor Branestawm's stories, which I note were written in this period too). Show Less
LibraryThing member brianc6
Set against the backdrop of the inevitable approach of war (WW2) in Europe and the political turmoil running rampant through England at the time, this is the very small story of a very small man who has lost himself and his attempt to recover something of his life by searching out a favourite
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childhood haunt. Moving and real, one of my all time favourites. Show Less
LibraryThing member Griff
One of the more memorable passages for me involves George Bowling's reflection on being transported in time - through memories triggered by one's sense of smell.
"The past is a curious thing. It's with you all the time. I
suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that
happened ten
no reality, it's just a set of facts that you've learned, like a
lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or
smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn't
merely come back to you, you're actually IN the past. It was like
that at this moment."
How true that is.
"The past is a curious thing. It's with you all the time. I
suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that
happened ten
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or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it's got no reality, it's just a set of facts that you've learned, like a
lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or
smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn't
merely come back to you, you're actually IN the past. It was like
that at this moment."
How true that is.
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LibraryThing member tzelman
Nostalgic account of a trip to a non-exstant past; Fatty Bowling as a pessimistic insurance salesman
LibraryThing member meggyweg
When I first had a look at this, I wondered if it was really by the same George Orwell. It certainly didn't seem to be anything like 1984 or Animal Farm. But it was indeed he. I spent most of the book wondering if anything was actually going to happen in this story. And nothing really did. I hated
The protagonist, a fat and rather unlikeable father of two named George Bowling, leads a rather boring middle-class existence in the mid-1930s. He sells insurance. He lives in a suburban house. He doesn't love his wife anymore and he doesn't really like his children. The impetus for the plot is that George won seventeen pounds in a horse race and decides to keep it a secret from his family and go on a secret trip back to Lower Binfield, the village where he grew up. Another good title for the book might have been You Can't Go Home Again, but Thomas Wolfe had already taken it. When George returns to Lower Binfield, he doesn't even recognize it.
The true beauty of the book is its description of the settings. A large chunk of the story is taken by George describing his youth and young adulthood in a time lost to us forever: before the War to End All Wars, then the world seemed a much safer place. As George puts it, it's a time you either know already and don't need to be told about, or a time you don't know and could never understand. Also important is Orwell's prescience for the future: war is looming, and George is well aware that it might change the world forever once again.
I would recommend this books to scholars of modern English literature and also turn-of-the-century England.
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it at first, but for some reason I kept coming back to it. It grew on me.The protagonist, a fat and rather unlikeable father of two named George Bowling, leads a rather boring middle-class existence in the mid-1930s. He sells insurance. He lives in a suburban house. He doesn't love his wife anymore and he doesn't really like his children. The impetus for the plot is that George won seventeen pounds in a horse race and decides to keep it a secret from his family and go on a secret trip back to Lower Binfield, the village where he grew up. Another good title for the book might have been You Can't Go Home Again, but Thomas Wolfe had already taken it. When George returns to Lower Binfield, he doesn't even recognize it.
The true beauty of the book is its description of the settings. A large chunk of the story is taken by George describing his youth and young adulthood in a time lost to us forever: before the War to End All Wars, then the world seemed a much safer place. As George puts it, it's a time you either know already and don't need to be told about, or a time you don't know and could never understand. Also important is Orwell's prescience for the future: war is looming, and George is well aware that it might change the world forever once again.
I would recommend this books to scholars of modern English literature and also turn-of-the-century England.
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LibraryThing member theboylatham
Seven out of ten. eBook.
Set in the days immediately leading up to WWII, this novel follows George Bowling as he temporarily escapes from his average life. He returns to the village where he grew up, only to find that everything had changed and he couldn't return to his younger, thinner
Strangely enjoyable for someone essentially having a mid-life crisis.
Set in the days immediately leading up to WWII, this novel follows George Bowling as he temporarily escapes from his average life. He returns to the village where he grew up, only to find that everything had changed and he couldn't return to his younger, thinner
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days.Strangely enjoyable for someone essentially having a mid-life crisis.
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LibraryThing member Amante
An Orwell book I liked! Great story about middle age and
the memories we carry forward from childhood.
the memories we carry forward from childhood.
LibraryThing member fourbears
George Bowling, in his mid forties and a WWI vet looking at the approach of a new war in the late Thirties reminisces about his life and times. An ordinary guy, not very educated, a commercial traveler with a wife in a slightly higher social cast. He starts out telling the reader about his new
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false teeth and ends of telling the story of his life. He’s not a terribly interesting guy, but he’s honest and not too hung up on himself. And the everyday detail of someone born at the turn of the twentieth century is great. Historians should read it too Show Less
LibraryThing member IonaS
I was somewhat disappointed by this book since I found the main character, George Bowling, and his life so utterly boring.
George’s father was a shopkeeper who mostly sold poultry food and fooder for tradesmen´s horses; the family lived in Lower Binfield, which was a town with about five hundred
George grew up to be “a fat middle-aged bloke with false teeth and a red face”. He became a shop assistant, sold insurance, and married a girl called Hilda who within only about three years had “settled down into a depressed, lifeless, middle-aged frump”.
George joined the army during the First World War and got wounded. Later, he was very focused on the approach of the Second World War, Hitler, Stalin, bombs and so on.
But this absolutely well-written book turned out to be very readable, despite its depressing content; I admit it was only towards the end that I realized it was a comedy.
P.S. The book was not autobiographical; George Orwell’s real name was Eric Blair.
George’s father was a shopkeeper who mostly sold poultry food and fooder for tradesmen´s horses; the family lived in Lower Binfield, which was a town with about five hundred
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houses, all of which were filled with insects. George grew up to be “a fat middle-aged bloke with false teeth and a red face”. He became a shop assistant, sold insurance, and married a girl called Hilda who within only about three years had “settled down into a depressed, lifeless, middle-aged frump”.
George joined the army during the First World War and got wounded. Later, he was very focused on the approach of the Second World War, Hitler, Stalin, bombs and so on.
But this absolutely well-written book turned out to be very readable, despite its depressing content; I admit it was only towards the end that I realized it was a comedy.
P.S. The book was not autobiographical; George Orwell’s real name was Eric Blair.
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LibraryThing member BenKline
Not the greatest of Orwell, and definitely doesn't follow that 'typical Orwell' feel to it. I love how the quote on the cover says its a "Charming, cheerful, minor masterpiece" when the entirety of the novel is pessimistic and about how horrible suburban life is, how bad married life is, with kids,
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and nothing but bills, and how the future (and not just WWII but the after-war) will be likewise horrible if not worse. Definitely not a 'charming and cheerful' novel. Not a BAD novel.... but slow, plodding, pessimistic, and altogether forgettable. Show Less
LibraryThing member HistReader
I have little toleration for pessimistic people. In real life, I avoid cynics and their defeatist attitudes; likewise, in literature, I tend not to read too much of it either. Yet, there is something fascinating about George Orwell that I keep coming back to and make accommodation for.
On so many
Boys never change. I was much like a young George Bowling. I fished as a child; somehow, the activity slowly became less a part of my life. I biked everywhere, climbing the social ladder based on the model of bike; the number of speeds determined one's independence. I too worked in a grocery as a teenager, and once thought it possible to labor amongst the aisles and goods, seeing the middle-aged men and women who had made retail their career.
Orwell writes with all five senses in mind. For a young Bowling, there were enough similarities to my youth, there seemed no difference.
As I began this review, cynicism has little appreciation for me, yet I for some reason give Geogre Orwell a pass. Perhaps it is my affection for his book 1984 and a nostalgia for Animal Farm? Per chance, he triggers my memories of the punk band The Subhumans. Like so much of British sensibilities, both the band and author share an overt vein that one's life is determined by those in command, and little choices provide a sense of control over one's destiny.
Streams of 1984 were evident in Coming Up for Air, almost like a precursor to a dystopian society was just around the corner. Hitler would have been the catalyst for Big Brother to campaign on safety and slowly develop a system of Ministries.
Overall, it is hard to imagine this book was not in some way - possibly a profound one - an autobiography, a memoir of sorts.
On so many
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levels, he plays into my nostalgia. No, I was not a child of the '80s,'90s and turn of the century... one-hundred-years after George Bowling grew up. I was probably of the last generation to race down to corner store only to spend unnecessary minutes anguishing over the selection of penny candies. George Orwell fictionalizes a true life phenomenon; he taps into a universality that struck close to home, even a century later. Boys never change. I was much like a young George Bowling. I fished as a child; somehow, the activity slowly became less a part of my life. I biked everywhere, climbing the social ladder based on the model of bike; the number of speeds determined one's independence. I too worked in a grocery as a teenager, and once thought it possible to labor amongst the aisles and goods, seeing the middle-aged men and women who had made retail their career.
Orwell writes with all five senses in mind. For a young Bowling, there were enough similarities to my youth, there seemed no difference.
As I began this review, cynicism has little appreciation for me, yet I for some reason give Geogre Orwell a pass. Perhaps it is my affection for his book 1984 and a nostalgia for Animal Farm? Per chance, he triggers my memories of the punk band The Subhumans. Like so much of British sensibilities, both the band and author share an overt vein that one's life is determined by those in command, and little choices provide a sense of control over one's destiny.
Streams of 1984 were evident in Coming Up for Air, almost like a precursor to a dystopian society was just around the corner. Hitler would have been the catalyst for Big Brother to campaign on safety and slowly develop a system of Ministries.
Overall, it is hard to imagine this book was not in some way - possibly a profound one - an autobiography, a memoir of sorts.
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LibraryThing member kylekatz
I loved this book. It had the most marvelous old-world feeling to it. It's about a middle-aged insurance salesman named George Bowling. He lives in a suburb called West Bletchley and more or less hates his wife and kids, but he's used to them. He kind of accepts his lot in life. He's got to scrape
One day he gets nostalgic for his childhood and starts to review his life. He grew up in a village of about 2,000 souls and was a child at the time of the Boer War. His youth is rather idyllic without being too romantic. He runs around the countryside with other boys, fishing and ratting with ferrets, and not really having a care in the world.
When he's Sixteen his father sends him to work at a grocer's to earn his keep and he does so for a few years with the idea of learning the business and maybe having his own shop one day.
Then bam it's World War I and he goes off to fight without a thought. It's what good Britons do. The war disillusions him greatly and after an injury sends him to the Home Guard, he's more then happy to wait out the last couple of years reading books in a backwater.
He can no longer imagine going back to his village after the war and he starts selling insurance presently. Gets married and finds himself stuck in the rat race.
One day he wants to go back to the simplicity of life before the war and he basically discovers that you can't go home again.
The beauty of the book is in the language and the homely sort of philosophy of the main character. His love of nature and the things he's seen pass away in his lifetime. The coming of cars and planes and bombs and radio and pictures. The growing of industry and towns and urbanization. It would be nostalgia if it wasn't such great literature. As it is I'm sad it ended.
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by and keep on plugging to meet the bills with his wife worrying and nagging at him.One day he gets nostalgic for his childhood and starts to review his life. He grew up in a village of about 2,000 souls and was a child at the time of the Boer War. His youth is rather idyllic without being too romantic. He runs around the countryside with other boys, fishing and ratting with ferrets, and not really having a care in the world.
When he's Sixteen his father sends him to work at a grocer's to earn his keep and he does so for a few years with the idea of learning the business and maybe having his own shop one day.
Then bam it's World War I and he goes off to fight without a thought. It's what good Britons do. The war disillusions him greatly and after an injury sends him to the Home Guard, he's more then happy to wait out the last couple of years reading books in a backwater.
He can no longer imagine going back to his village after the war and he starts selling insurance presently. Gets married and finds himself stuck in the rat race.
One day he wants to go back to the simplicity of life before the war and he basically discovers that you can't go home again.
The beauty of the book is in the language and the homely sort of philosophy of the main character. His love of nature and the things he's seen pass away in his lifetime. The coming of cars and planes and bombs and radio and pictures. The growing of industry and towns and urbanization. It would be nostalgia if it wasn't such great literature. As it is I'm sad it ended.
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LibraryThing member mbmackay
The third of Orwell's books I've read over the past few months. None of these books has been in the Animal Farm/1984 category, but this one has a verve lacking in Burmese Days and Clergyman's Daughter.
Curiously told in the first person, the book tells of the life and reflections on a fat 45 year
Written before the war, the book strongly states that a coming war is inevitable, and that the consequences will be shattering. Absolutely correct on two counts.
Curiously told in the first person, the book tells of the life and reflections on a fat 45 year
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old insurance salesman. I thought Orwell nailed the non-elite voice of his protagonist, but I see other comments that suggest that the character couldn't have had the complexity suggested in the book. Why not?Written before the war, the book strongly states that a coming war is inevitable, and that the consequences will be shattering. Absolutely correct on two counts.
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LibraryThing member Castlelass
Coming Up for Air is a character-driven novel about the life of forty-five-year-old insurance salesman George Bowling. Bowling tells his story in first person, starting with his early memories of growing up in the English village of Lower Binfield, the son of a grain merchant. He remembers the wars
George Bowling is a coarse low-key character and there is not much interaction among the characters. The plot is minimal. One of the highlights of the book is his return to Lower Binfield as an adult, and the realization that everything has changed: “One thing, I thought as I drove down the hill, I’m finished with this notion of getting back into the past. What’s the good of trying to revisit the scenes of your boyhood? They don’t exist. Coming up for air! But there isn’t any air. The dustbin that we’re in reaches up to the stratosphere.”
I found the message of powerlessness in the face of global events particularly relevant to today. I enjoyed the masterful writing style, but it is unevenly paced. At times I was drawn into the story and at other times I found my mind wandering. The ending is extremely odd. I have now read three of Orwell’s works. This book is realistic, and therefore, much different from his dystopian novels, 1984 and Animal Farm. I liked it but not as much as the other two.
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in his life – the Boer War of his childhood and his service in the Great War. The story shows how life changed for the worse in the aftermath of those two wars. It also portrays life in England in the lead-up to WWII and the rise of totalitarianism. The book was published in 1939, and it is interesting to look back now knowing what actually happened. George Bowling is a coarse low-key character and there is not much interaction among the characters. The plot is minimal. One of the highlights of the book is his return to Lower Binfield as an adult, and the realization that everything has changed: “One thing, I thought as I drove down the hill, I’m finished with this notion of getting back into the past. What’s the good of trying to revisit the scenes of your boyhood? They don’t exist. Coming up for air! But there isn’t any air. The dustbin that we’re in reaches up to the stratosphere.”
I found the message of powerlessness in the face of global events particularly relevant to today. I enjoyed the masterful writing style, but it is unevenly paced. At times I was drawn into the story and at other times I found my mind wandering. The ending is extremely odd. I have now read three of Orwell’s works. This book is realistic, and therefore, much different from his dystopian novels, 1984 and Animal Farm. I liked it but not as much as the other two.
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LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
This is one of Orwell's comic novels, but with a serious undertone. It's 1938, and there are hints that England may soon be at war again. "Fatty" Bowling is a middle-aged suburban insurance salesman. He feels oppressed by his wife--"She's one of those people who get their main lack in life out of
When Fatty has to get false teeth--a landmark: "When your last natural tooth goes, the time when you can kid yourself that you're a Hollywood sheik is definitely at an end. And I was fat as well."--he decides to stop and run away for a week--to come up for air--to reflect on his life. He returns to his childhood village in an attempt to recapture his idyllic pre-WWI youth. Of course he finds the village irrevocably changed, and the impending war with Germany intrusive. There are even hints of 1984 here:
"The world we're going down into, the kind of hate-world, slogan-world. The coloured shirts, the barbed wire, the rubber truncheons. The secret cells where the electric light burns night and day, and the detectives watching you while you sleep. and the processions and the posters with enormous faces, and the crowds of a million people all cheering the leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really worship him..."
We all know that you can't go home again--can't recapture the Edenic past. So while there is plenty of humor in this book, it is ultimately a downer, and even Fatty recognizes this:
"I'm finished with this notion of getting back into the past. What's the good of trying to revisit the scenes of your boyhood? They don't exist! Coming up for air! But there isn't any air. The dust bin that we're in reaches up to the atmosphere."
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forseeing disasters. Only petty disasters of course." Disasters such as the price of butter going up, the gas bill being enormous, the kids needing new shoes. His children are monsters: "The truth is that kids aren't in any way poetic, they're merely savage little animals, except an animal is a quarter as selfish." His life is stultifying, and his street "a prison with all the cells in a row. A line of semi-detached torture-chambers."When Fatty has to get false teeth--a landmark: "When your last natural tooth goes, the time when you can kid yourself that you're a Hollywood sheik is definitely at an end. And I was fat as well."--he decides to stop and run away for a week--to come up for air--to reflect on his life. He returns to his childhood village in an attempt to recapture his idyllic pre-WWI youth. Of course he finds the village irrevocably changed, and the impending war with Germany intrusive. There are even hints of 1984 here:
"The world we're going down into, the kind of hate-world, slogan-world. The coloured shirts, the barbed wire, the rubber truncheons. The secret cells where the electric light burns night and day, and the detectives watching you while you sleep. and the processions and the posters with enormous faces, and the crowds of a million people all cheering the leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really worship him..."
We all know that you can't go home again--can't recapture the Edenic past. So while there is plenty of humor in this book, it is ultimately a downer, and even Fatty recognizes this:
"I'm finished with this notion of getting back into the past. What's the good of trying to revisit the scenes of your boyhood? They don't exist! Coming up for air! But there isn't any air. The dust bin that we're in reaches up to the atmosphere."
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LibraryThing member BrittanySteve
Beautufully written pre war cynicism from suburbia with social history of england
LibraryThing member burritapal
I disliked the character of George Bowling. I feel like this is a late work for George Orwell, and maybe he was losing his touch. This character is a total misogynist, and I suppose he has the life he deserves. A miserable marriage, two Rugrats, a crappy job selling insurance, and a mortgage on a
"It was the first time I'd seen her full face, and though I half expected what I saw, it gave me almost as big a shock as that first moment when I recognized her. I suppose when you look at the face of someone young, even of a child, you ought to be able to foresee what it'll look like when it's old. It's all a question of the shape of the bones. But if it had never occurred to me, when I was 20 and she was 22, to wonder what Elsie would look like at 47, it wouldn't have crossed my mind that she could ever look like THAT. The whole face had kind of sagged, as if it had somehow been drawn downwards. Do you know that type of middle-aged woman that has a face just like a bulldog? Great underhung jaw, mouth turned down at the corners, eyes sunken, with pouches underneath. Exactly like a bulldog."
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crappy house in a crappy subdivision. The protagonist was also an ultra-creep growing up, working away at being cruel to animals. Ugh. Get a load of this misogynistic description of a woman who George had lived with when he was young, and as a middle-aged "Tubby" he runs into, in her shop, on a trip to his old home-town: "It was the first time I'd seen her full face, and though I half expected what I saw, it gave me almost as big a shock as that first moment when I recognized her. I suppose when you look at the face of someone young, even of a child, you ought to be able to foresee what it'll look like when it's old. It's all a question of the shape of the bones. But if it had never occurred to me, when I was 20 and she was 22, to wonder what Elsie would look like at 47, it wouldn't have crossed my mind that she could ever look like THAT. The whole face had kind of sagged, as if it had somehow been drawn downwards. Do you know that type of middle-aged woman that has a face just like a bulldog? Great underhung jaw, mouth turned down at the corners, eyes sunken, with pouches underneath. Exactly like a bulldog."
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Subjects
Language
Original publication date
1939
Physical description
278 p.; 7 inches
ISBN
0151195293 / 9780151195299