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Title details for Julia by Sandra Newman - Wait list

Julia

by Sandra Newman
Louise Brealey
Audiobook
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London, chief city of Airstrip One, the third most populous province of Oceania. It's 1984 and Julia Worthing works as a mechanic fixing the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Under the ideology of IngSoc and the rule of the Party and its leader Big Brother, Julia is a model citizen - cheerfully cynical, believing in nothing and caring not at all about politics. She routinely breaks the rules but also collaborates with the regime whenever necessary. Everyone likes Julia. A diligent member of the Junior Anti-Sex League (though she is secretly promiscuous) she knows how to survive in a world of constant surveillance, Thought Police, Newspeak, Doublethink, child spies and the black markets of the prole neighbourhoods. She's very good at staying alive. But Julia becomes intrigued by a colleague from the Records Department - a mid-level worker of the Outer Party called Winston Smith - when she sees him locking eyes with a superior from the Inner Party at the Two Minutes Hate. And when one day, finding herself walking toward Winston, she impulsively hands him a note - a potentially suicidal gesture - she comes to realise that she's losing her grip and can no longer safely navigate her world. Seventy-five years after Orwell finished writing his iconic novel, Sandra Newman has tackled the world of Big Brother in a truly convincing way, offering a dramatically different, feminist narrative that is true to and stands alongside the original. For the millions of readers who have been brought up with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, here, finally, is a provocative, vital and utterly satisfying companion novel.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 19, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781803511214
      • File size: 413744 KB
      • Duration: 14:21:57

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 21, 2023
      Newman (The Men) delivers a provocative feminist retelling of George Orwell’s 1984 from the perspective of Julia Worthing, a mechanic working on the machines in the Ministry of Truth’s Fiction Department, where she’s become a master at subverting surveillance. As a result, Julia enjoys a healthy clandestine sex life and averts the ever-present threat of the ironically named Ministry of Love’s “eyeless mice gnawing at her in the dark.” She soon becomes fascinated by Records Department colleague and fellow apostate Winston Smith, whom she dubs “old Misery.” Unlike Orwell’s Julia, Newman’s is dominant and fastidious. Still, Newman stays true to Orwell’s dystopian details as she places Julia at the center of 1984’s plot points, such as having her feign allegiance and alliance to Big Brother and avoid even the suggestion of malfeasance and the horrors of Room 101 at all costs, until she can’t. Julia’s narrative voice is refreshingly fearless as she navigates her way around the Party’s nefarious thought policing, and a wicked plot twist spins the original narrative on its ear. Newman adds a fresh coat of menacing gray to Orwell’s gloomy world.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Louise Brealey powerfully performs this sci-fi novel, inspired by the novel 1984. In George Orwell's work, Julia serves as a secondary character to Winston, the beleaguered staffer at the Ministry of Truth who is struggling to live under the specter of Big Brother. Newman's audiobook expands the story, capturing the unique struggles of its women, a theme clearly missing in the original work. The result is not simply a retelling of the story from a new point of view. Here, Julia is so fully realized that the listening experience enriches the original work. Brealey doesn't hold back on the intensity required. She delivers the novel's shocking moments, as well as its surprising subtle humor. S.P.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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