Reviews with content warning for Child death - 1984

Painfully slow, dull writing. I normally enjoy dystopian novels but this one was just trying too har. Everything was for shock value, which ended up making nothing surprising. I find it ironic that the story involves sending a warning against scaring people into believing your political ideologies, but the author is a socialist and is advocating for socialism. The government claims to be socialist, but at one point it’s revealed it’s not actually socialist, and the only way forward is to become socialist. I don’t care what your political leanings are, there’s blatant hypocrisy by the author in trying to scare people into becoming socialist whilst advocating against scaring people into agreeing with your political opinions.

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kaymay29's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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lucasgillon's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

If you ignore the political theory section then you're a coward

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elizajstocks's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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emily_bg's review against another edition

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dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I found this an uncomfortable read. A lot of issues are still relevant today.

I enjoyed the book and thought it was cleverly written and very haunting

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mme_carton's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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izzydelaya's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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chaosandwildflowers's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I wanted to like this book so much. I really did. I love classics! I love challenging books that make you think! But from the moment I turned the first page, I just could not get into it!

First issue: the writing style. It's so...dry? Like even when things get interesting towards the end, it's a bit of a slog to get through. And this might have been the fault of my particular edition, but the paragraphs were SO long and blocky, especially once I got to the book within the book (don't even get me started on how useless I found the book within the book).

Second problem: the characters. To put it bluntly, I hated every single character. All of them. Except for the clothesline lady, I liked her well enough lmao, but everyone else I just wanted to strangle with my bare hands!! And I understand, I get it, I realize that this is part of the book's commentary, but what I've learned from reading this book is that it doesn't matter how ~deep~ the commentary is, if the character whose thoughts I'm reading is hateable and a loser, I just could not care less about what they have to say! And Julia? Equally hateable. She and Winston are, even at their best, SO self centered, I just honestly wanted to throw the book across the room the whole time either one of them was on the page, which was the entire time.

When I take a step back and look at this through the perspective of having read it, I see how Orwell was using every detail to get his message across, this whole idea of warning us of totalitarianism and the danger of not knowing the past, and all of that, but I don't think I will ever willingly read this book again.

So, at the end of the day, would I recommend this book? Yes and no. If you're looking for an entertaining dystopia on the level of The Hunger Games, you're not going to find that here. Buuuuuuut if you're in the kind of headspace where you're ready to read an unentertaining, repetitive, dryly written book with exactly zero likable characters to be seen; if you think you're ready to slog through all that, then yes would recommend it because I think its the kind of book everyone should read at least once. Just don't go into it expecting to root for the characters or care more than a little about the plot.

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