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BURNING DOWN GEORGE ORWELL'S HOUSE

Name: BURNING DOWN GEORGE ORWELL'S HOUSE
Author: Andrew Ervin
ISBN: 978-1-61695-494-9

by Andrew Ervin ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 5, 2015

A dramatic, thoughtful, and at times comic revisiting of (and attempt to escape from) Orwell’s world.

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Advertising, single-malt whisky, and a remote Scottish island feature prominently in this novel about a man paying homage to his love for Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Ray Welter, a burned-out advertising executive with a failed marriage, decides to radically alter his life by going to Jura, an island in the Inner Hebrides, and renting Barnhill, the very house where Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ray has been obsessed by the novel since college, and in flashbacks to his career as an adman, both he and the reader see the irony of his life—he’s become a slave to Big Brother (in the guise of corporate America), using Newspeak to sell products that he doesn’t believe in. On the island he finds an assortment of eccentrics—one of whom believes himself to be a werewolf—and at least one almost-certifiable sociopath, Gavin Pitcairn, whose 17-year-old daughter, Molly, desperately wants to leave Jura and go to art school. As one might expect, Ray finds Barnhill much different from the romanticized mental image he’d created, and those older islanders who remember Eric Blair (George Orwell’s real name) have not-so-fond memories of him. The house had been abandoned for a good while, and it's in such a state of disrepair that it's almost unlivable, but Ray takes comfort in the abundant local Scotch whisky and in rereading his beloved first edition of the novel. When Molly takes refuge with Ray at Barnhill to escape her abusive father, she acts provocatively, though no romance develops. Still, Gavin assumes the worst, making Ray’s hold on life much more tenuous than it had been.

A dramatic, thoughtful, and at times comic revisiting of (and attempt to escape from) Orwell’s world.

Pub Date: May 5, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-61695-494-9

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Soho

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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MAGIC HOUR

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

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Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.