Keep the Aspidistra Flying (Harvest Book) (Paperback)

Although Gordon declares that he has waged war on the 'money god' you get the impression that his self induced poverty gives him justification for acting on principle. Certainly to an extent this is true but he does seem to be protecting himself from realities. He is content to find a place where he is comfortable. Shielded from faliure, expectation and the challanges and difficulties of simply living - money, ambition and hope are all obsolete. His final descent is harrowing but Gordon always has an air of listlessness as well as a perverse contentment.

It is only after Rosemary yields to 'the only thing that matters' does Gordon's chosen way of life alter and this is what Keep the Aspidistra Flying is about. It is about being alive or in Orwell's words being born, being, married, begetting, working and dying. It is with a real sense of delight that you leave the book with the knowledge that finally something has happened to the Comstock family.

Throughly recommended.

Any reader who shares Gordon's political views will no doubt sympathise with him but at the same time, will want to take him by the shoulders and shake the idealism and naivete out of him before he wrecks his relationship with his long-suffering girlfriend and sets himself on a path to self-destruction. Satirical, moving, funny and ultimately positive as Gordon learns the importance of compromise - the Orwell of 'Keep The Aspidistra Flying' is not the bleak, visonary Orwell of 'Animal Farm' and '1984'.

However, the descriptions of Gordon's seedy bedsit will make you want to go and have a bath straight away.

"Keep the Aspidistra Flying" was written in 1935/1936 and focuses on the seemingly ever-apparent "worship of money". Written though the main character Gordon, Orwell was able to voice his own personal beliefs about his hatred of the money-lead, social-status frightened people of the modern-age.

Orwell has been able to use the characters that enter the second-hand bookshop where Gordon works to reveal his own opinions on each of the social levels. His wicked, darkly comic and often very harsh views on the customers are representative of Orwell's unfaithful personality towards others. We can really see Orwell's own world-weariness yet, as a reader, he never makes us feel sorry for him at all. He refers to a chemist's shop assistant very cruelly as an "ugly girl of twenty, hatless, in a white overall, with a sallow, blithering, honest face and powerful spectacles that distorted her eyes". This type of personal degrading is typical of Gordon very early-on in the book. As the story develops, you will find that although his expressiveness of others decreases, his unwanted financial reliability on his acquantainces makes him more abrupt and unstable when talking to even his closest of friends. Without money, his personality fails, his spirit is killed and any sort of zest for life he once held has vanished.

As Orwell writes many, many times - Gordon believes that without money he is nothing, an unknown and not worthy of anything. Gordon is obsessed with money and refuses to let-go of the notion that money really does buy you happiness even when he is told otherwise by his caring friend Ravelston and girlfriend, Rosemary. Some think that Orwell's incessant reference to the notion that money is absolutely everything in Gordon's life is overdone. Although agreeing that sometimes the points he makes can seem a little unnecessary, I feel that these constant referrals are true to life. We as a society are constantly thinking about money - how to make it, save it, spend it etc. I therefore believe that Orwell has successfully captured the atmosphere and negative feelings of the beginning of the money driven world and, as a nation, our unchanging need for wealth.

In "Aspidistra" you will find some of Orwell's most expressive and to-the-point writing. He has managed to deal with a subject that was extremely important to him in a true-to-life, fair and above all nakedly honest way so that any reader - young or old -can relate to Gordon's situation. Thankfully, few of us have encountered Gordon's actual circumstances but, in Orwell's writing, it is really possible to imagine what it was like living not just 'under' the breadline but, as Gordon saw it, miles below it. To some, Gordon's situations may not seem that bad and that Gordon is over-worrying. Granted, as time has changed, public opinion on views of class, social status and money have changed, however the brilliant way in which this story was written has allowed everyone to experience the pain and desperation of one single spiritually-empty man in an environment of wealth. The aspidistra plant is used to represent everything Orwell is trying to say - a well kept aspidistra is a sign of wealth and happiness, an untidy one is a sign of poverty.

Gordon's character is made even more complex, opinionated, money-loathing, middle-class hating and, more personality-wise, harsh with the totally opposite character of his ever-caring sister, Julia. Julia is a kind tea-shop worker who never seems to hold many opinions of her own. Having had beaten out of her any slightest willingness or ability to succeed in life by her parents, she cannot see how Gordon could just throw away his positively accepted and secure job at the New Albion. She seems to stand for everything that Gordon does not - both in life and reasoning - yet keeping understandably quiet about it, whether because of a hidden fear of Gordon or because she simply had no longer the confidence to voice these because of what her parents did to her spirit. After all, Julia's (as it seems) only real contact with 'normal' life (according to Gordon) is through him - could she really afford to lose it all? I personally think it is a mixture of both (weighing slightly heavier with her parents' little encouragement in life).

With a perfect blend of fully fleshed-out characters and plot - Orwell has excelled in his message to those of the messages contained in "1984" or "Animal Farm". The message here is that money gets you everywhere yet nowhere.

Gordon's belief that money-buys-all may seem ridiculous to those who haven't read this book but Orwell's perfectly real and well-written events have a huge impact upon proving to the reader that this is in fact true... well, for Gordon anyway.

A true, often-overlooked masterpiece through and through, this is definitely one novel that will spur the beginnings of many a thought within the open-minded reader.

I cannot wait to read yet more from this unbelievable author!