SPOILERS AHEAD
I can't say I enjoyed reading 1984, not after the first quarter or so of the book anyway. It started off with such promise, an interesting concept, and while a little slow, after about page 60 I thought it was starting to go somewhere.
But then it didn't.
To me it just seemed like an excuse for philosophical musings rather than a properly-realised narrative. Problems I had with this book include:
1) a sexy young woman falling in love with an overweight middle aged man she'd never spoken to before seems more male fantasy than realistic;
Why does Hollywood always slim down tragic characters? First Winston, then Quoyle...
2) the sexualised violence fantasy didn't endear the main character to me either;
3) also didn't buy that said young woman would laugh off Winston's 'I wanted to sexually assault and murder you' comment. Talk about psychotic;
4) having two long chapters of a textbook was a lazy mechanism to provide backstory. I found it so difficult to get through these very dry sections;
5) Winston doesn't really DO anything about rebelling against society. All he really does is talk to a man in a pub. Both O'Brien and Julia approach him. Things happen to him rather than him actively trying to bring about change instead of just thinking about it;
6) the narrative seems like it's going somewhere then suddenly loses steam and descends into torture porn. It's a very unsatisfying narrative arc;
7) I didn't buy that the old shopkeeper was a spy the whole time, nor that he wasn't really old either. Was he really just waiting for Winston to randomly come into his shop? Seems so farfetched;
8) as if you wouldn't check the room for a mic or telescreen?! And the realisation that it was behind the painting just seems to spontaneously come out of nowhere. It's like Orwell ran out of ideas and just decided ok they're captured now because reasons. No daring infiltration or subterfuge like has been foreshadowed by the meeting with O'Brien. No, just in their usual tryst spot they get arrested SWAT-style; and
9) I didn't like the ending. I didn't believe that Winston had changed his mind about big brother and the scene where he follows Julia is awkward and weird.
Yes, I know, predicting the future, North Korea, blah blah blah. But Orwell should have written a bunch of essays rather than trying to build a narrative around it. Too bad this wasn't as well-developed as Animal Farm.
