- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Mariner Books (22 Oct 1969)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0156196255
- ISBN-13: 978-0156196253
- Product Dimensions: 20.7 x 13.6 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 4,660,034 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Coming Up for Air (Penguin Modern Classics)
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First Sentence
THE IDEA came to me the day I got my new false teeth. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
THE IDEA came to me the day I got my new false teeth. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I doubt if 1% or the people who've read "1984" or "Animal Farm" have read this novel. This is sad indeed, as it's a fine novel in its own right, not just a book to be read for Orwell completists. The narrator, George Bowling, is an ordinary, pretty decent middle England sort of character, trapped in a lifeless marriage and nostalgic for days gone past. To try to recapture better days, he revisits his home town - but things don't go as planned... The plot of the book is sparse, with much of the text being George's recollections of old times and people, and his observations about British (or should that be English) life in the 1930s. Orwell's powers of observation were never sharper than here, and in the narrator, he created one of his few memorable fictional characters. And there's humour too. It is interesting to compare this novel with some popular books of the late 50s and early 60s such as "Hurry on Down" and "Saturday Night & Sunday Morning". I found myself wondering whether Orwell was the spiritual father of the Angry Young Men.
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Orwell captures the spirit of a generation here. His central character sees salvation in returning to the happy environment of his youth, and with it some escape from a wretched existence. Yet, he finds nothing but change and is disillusioned by the experience. It's a novel that explores the theme of the modern world and a changing society. We often feel that in the present fast-moving world we have a monopoly on complaining about the world of the future. Orwell demonstrate's that unease about changing towns, cities, and nations has existed for as long as people have lived in communities.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If you only read the apocalyptic misery of 1984 or the gut-wrenching descriptions of extreme squalor in Down and Out in Paris and London and A Clergyman's Daughter, you would probably have little hesitation in describing George Orwell as a cheerless writer. He certainly has an impressive faculty for depicting human suffering in graphic detail but, from the evidence of this book, that is clearly not all that he does.
There is more, much more, to Orwell than gloom. In Coming up for Air we are treated to sunny passages of a happier, funnier Orwell. This book is truly sublime.
The chief protagonist, George Bowling, is a fat, middle-aged bloke who is trapped in a life he loathes with a nagging wife from whom he cannot escape. He longs for the joys of his country childhood when he enjoyed simple pleasures like walking through beautiful English fields and woods and indulged in the thing that gave him more pleasure than any other: fishing. All the while he is worried that everything he holds sacred is about to be destroyed forever by yet another pointless war not long since he has survived active service in World War I.
The powers of description displayed by Orwell in painting vivid pictures of the landscape of Bowling's childhood are truly breathtaking. In these one can see that Orwell is being autobiographical.
Writing in the first person, Orwell brings out emotions in Bowling which all of us are sometimes guilty of possessing. Who can truthfully say that they have never felt like Bowling and wanted to escape the stifling drudgery of modern living, however briefly?
If you haven't already done so, do yourself a favour and read a copy of this charming novel. Like its title, reading it feels like coming up for air.
There is more, much more, to Orwell than gloom. In Coming up for Air we are treated to sunny passages of a happier, funnier Orwell. This book is truly sublime.
The chief protagonist, George Bowling, is a fat, middle-aged bloke who is trapped in a life he loathes with a nagging wife from whom he cannot escape. He longs for the joys of his country childhood when he enjoyed simple pleasures like walking through beautiful English fields and woods and indulged in the thing that gave him more pleasure than any other: fishing. All the while he is worried that everything he holds sacred is about to be destroyed forever by yet another pointless war not long since he has survived active service in World War I.
The powers of description displayed by Orwell in painting vivid pictures of the landscape of Bowling's childhood are truly breathtaking. In these one can see that Orwell is being autobiographical.
Writing in the first person, Orwell brings out emotions in Bowling which all of us are sometimes guilty of possessing. Who can truthfully say that they have never felt like Bowling and wanted to escape the stifling drudgery of modern living, however briefly?
If you haven't already done so, do yourself a favour and read a copy of this charming novel. Like its title, reading it feels like coming up for air.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not Orwell's Best Work
I am a great fan of Orwell but was far from convinced that this was a novel as such. It reads more a fictionalised political monologue, with 'George Bowlby', the narrator and... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Suzi Finch
Should be more popular than it is
The plot for this novel is very simple; George Bowling is a fat, forty five year old man who looks around at his life and wonders just how did he get here? Read more
Published 6 months ago by J. Willis
Don't bypass this underrated classic
Compared to Orwell's more celebrated works, such as Animal Farm and 1984, Coming Up for Air receives comparatively little attention or critical acclaim. Read more
Published 9 months ago by John Moseley
Outstandingly good
"Coming Up For Air" is perhaps one of the finest novels I've read about yearning for the past, and the reality of finding a return to nostalgic haunts something of a... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Jl Adcock
Coming up for Air
George Orwell. Coming Up for Air
What strikes one almost immediately with this book is George Orwell's prescience. Read more
What strikes one almost immediately with this book is George Orwell's prescience. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Mature Student
A vivid picture of an England not long gone but long forgotten
I am not a purist literary critic by any means and struggled to detect all the hints of 1984 and Animal Farm that others have spotted, but I prefer to look at this novel on its own... Read more
Published on 25 Mar 2010 by Neil Russell-Bates
Good Stuff - Definitely worth reading.
What always strikes me about Orwell's writing is the amount of meaning he imbues into such apparently simple language. Read more
Published on 10 Feb 2010 by Garth Algar
Coming Back for Air
I first became aware of this book when I heard it on 'A Book at Bedtime' on Radio 4 in about 1975. I have read it a number of times in the subsequent 35 years & it is always a... Read more
Published on 9 Jan 2010 by Patrick 7
Wonderfully readable and true to life
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... Read more
Published on 29 Jan 2009 by John Hopper
One of my favourite books.
I think all Orwell`s books are brilliant but I love this one the most, having just read it again for the umpteenth time. Read more
Published on 7 Sep 2008 by G. E. Mitchell
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