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Sandra Newman's Julia—a retelling of 1984 from the perspective of Winston's love interest who was never fully fleshed out in the original novel—sounded fascinating from the start. And it is fascinating. It's one of those turn-it-over-and-over-in-your-head-for-days-after-reading titles, and I've been turning it over, but now it's time to review before too much slips my mind. Rather than trying to write an "orderly" review, I want to point out some aspects of the book that I particularly appreciated.

� First off, thank you, thank you, thank you Ms. Newman for making this cardboard cutout of a character into a lively, intelligent woman. I found the way Julia functioned primarily as someone Winston could react to in 1984 profoundly irritating.

� Second, Newman nails life in Oceania. Nails it. Julia looks at her world and sees. While Winston was embedded in his own mind, through Julia we have a vivid depiction of daily life in Oceania—community housing for unmarried women, a black market between party members and proles, a government plan to create "sex-free" (as in not requiring sex for conception) babies, endless efforts to travel the explosive territory of newspeak.

� Third, it complicates Julia's motivations in ways that are fascinating, but that I don't want to go into detail about because of spoilers.

Julia isn't just a 1984 knock-off. It builds on 1984 and respects that novel's truths, but it also offers a more complex, detailed, twisted, directed-by-unseeable-motivations world than did 1984.

I'm not sure about the ending. That's one of the turning-it-over-in-my-head items I haven't yet worked through, but this novel is very much worth reading in its own right and for the vividness it brings to Orwell's original novel.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss; the opinions are my own.