This title gets referenced often – ever since, well – 1984 (and probably in the years leading up to it). Having had enough of not being in the know, I decided to pick it up and give it a read. All that talk had built up an expectation of a foreboding cautionary tale with an unsettling amount of specific predictions currently eerily embedded in our present reality. (Btw, that's rather accurate.) I was not expecting an "exciting" read, nor (honestly) great literature. To my surprise, Orwell's words excited me from a literary perspective, and even more remarkably "1984" breaks into a brisk, fascinatingly odd love story that unfolds in a beautifully mysterious and freshly awkward manner. I was hooked!

Sadly, somewhere about the middle, the politics which had been so beautifully revealed as part of the story break the surface of the water like an ugly submarine which had been far more interesting when unseen, but still trackable by indirect clues. I get what Orwell was trying to do. I appreciate the break in style and even maybe the need to be strictly expository as a tool to relate certain progressions in story that I'll not detail as to spoil. However, I saw no need to continue page after page (perhaps 50 pages and often redundant). I barely made it through those pages. I wanted to toss the book. And probably had I read this before hearing all the hoopla, I may have given up on it. Instead, I soldiered on (so to speak). I was not rewarded for my efforts (on the literary level). Nor was I completely sold on our main character's choices at the pivotal point leading up to that exposition.

That said, this is a cautionary story, the reader is not meant to enjoy "excitement" from beginning to end. So, yes, the second half is a hard read. Thankfully, once the "torture" of the exposition is over, the book becomes more enjoyable to read, though the content has quite a change of tone.

Despite my mixed feelings regarding the reading experience, I concur with the hoopla – this is an important work.

Read more Book Reviews by Author/Illustrator Ross Anthony.