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Anna's Reviews > Julia
Julia
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by
Before I get into this review, a top tip for reading a book quickly: buy a copy to send to a friend for their birthday exactly a week before said birthday. Now you have a strict deadline for finishing it. This was my experience of Julia, although it's unlikely that without the time limit I would have lingered as it isn't exactly a fun read. I suspect the reader's experience will be significantly related to their memories of reading 1984. I do wonder what someone who hasn't read 1984 would make of it, and indeed what would encourage them to do so in the first place. Julia fills in the female perspective on life under Big Brother and the events of 1984 missing from Winston's narration. It is essentially fanfiction, which I do not mean to be pejorative in any way as I have a keen appreciation for the form. (Another 1984 fanfic of note is chapter 7 of Adam Roberts' novel The This.)
My own experience of 1984 is of remembering the ending differently each time I read it, the first time in my teens. There's no other novel I can recall interpreting so divergently upon rereading it, to the point of wondering if I accidentally missed the last chapter first time around. Thus I think of 1984 as having a distinctive setting, a memorable political message, and an unstable ending. Newman fills gaps in both world-building and plot by making Julia the protagonist. Cynicism about sex and romance are the most striking elements she adds, in my view. There are many horrible and frightening scenes, as you'd expect, as well as the occasional joyful or kind moment. Pervasive throughout is pragmatism - Julia is just trying to survive and is skilled at doing so. While 1984 was a narrative of Winston's will and mind being broken by the imperative of survival under totalitarianism, Julia doesn't have a clear arc of that kind. This left me contemplating the retelling's purpose.
Orwell wrote a dystopia set 36 years in the future; Newman wrote a dystopian alternate history set 40 years in the past. In my opinion, a dystopia should comment on anxieties of the time, as 1984 does. What is Julia adding that is relevant to today's political context? Or if Julia is more of a literary comment on history than a dystopia, what does it say about totalitarian communist regimes? I could not come up with much in answer to either question when thinking about the ending.
(view spoiler)
While I found it compelling enough while reading, at the end I was left without an impression of much depth. The blurb describes Julia as provocative, but it seemed to me a shallow sort of provocation rather than genuine critique. Bringing the female perspective to the forefront is certainly an interesting project, but to be a ground-breaking feminist retelling I think it would need greater engagement with ideology and politics. Or perhaps the setting of 1984 doesn't offer space for a feminist political statement relevant to our times?
A relevant comparison is with recent retellings of The Iliad. I enjoyed The Silence of the Girls, which was largely narrated by the slave girl Briseis but otherwise left unchanged, while I was blown away by Country, which transposed the plot and characters of the Iliad to the Troubles of Northern Island. I can only conclude that Julia is not ambitious or transformative enough. In order to make 1984 genuinely relevant to the present day, I think more would need to be changed than just the narrator. 1984 is a classic for its historical relevance and influence on later writing. Among recent female-centric dystopian novels, I found Naomi Alderman's The Power a much more rewarding read.
My own experience of 1984 is of remembering the ending differently each time I read it, the first time in my teens. There's no other novel I can recall interpreting so divergently upon rereading it, to the point of wondering if I accidentally missed the last chapter first time around. Thus I think of 1984 as having a distinctive setting, a memorable political message, and an unstable ending. Newman fills gaps in both world-building and plot by making Julia the protagonist. Cynicism about sex and romance are the most striking elements she adds, in my view. There are many horrible and frightening scenes, as you'd expect, as well as the occasional joyful or kind moment. Pervasive throughout is pragmatism - Julia is just trying to survive and is skilled at doing so. While 1984 was a narrative of Winston's will and mind being broken by the imperative of survival under totalitarianism, Julia doesn't have a clear arc of that kind. This left me contemplating the retelling's purpose.
Orwell wrote a dystopia set 36 years in the future; Newman wrote a dystopian alternate history set 40 years in the past. In my opinion, a dystopia should comment on anxieties of the time, as 1984 does. What is Julia adding that is relevant to today's political context? Or if Julia is more of a literary comment on history than a dystopia, what does it say about totalitarian communist regimes? I could not come up with much in answer to either question when thinking about the ending.
(view spoiler)
While I found it compelling enough while reading, at the end I was left without an impression of much depth. The blurb describes Julia as provocative, but it seemed to me a shallow sort of provocation rather than genuine critique. Bringing the female perspective to the forefront is certainly an interesting project, but to be a ground-breaking feminist retelling I think it would need greater engagement with ideology and politics. Or perhaps the setting of 1984 doesn't offer space for a feminist political statement relevant to our times?
A relevant comparison is with recent retellings of The Iliad. I enjoyed The Silence of the Girls, which was largely narrated by the slave girl Briseis but otherwise left unchanged, while I was blown away by Country, which transposed the plot and characters of the Iliad to the Troubles of Northern Island. I can only conclude that Julia is not ambitious or transformative enough. In order to make 1984 genuinely relevant to the present day, I think more would need to be changed than just the narrator. 1984 is a classic for its historical relevance and influence on later writing. Among recent female-centric dystopian novels, I found Naomi Alderman's The Power a much more rewarding read.
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