Julia returns the timelessly relevant world of 1984 to readers' attentions with a female protagonist more clever and feeling, and perhaps more cynical, than George Orwell's Winston Smith ever was.
Sandra Newman's retelling matches closely Orwell's familiar and disquieting original. Big Brother is the leader of the nation of Oceania, at war with Eastasia (or was it Eurasia?). Telescreens squawking nonstop propaganda constantly observe every move of the Citizens of Airstrip One, formerly London. Where Orwell offered Julia as colleague, lover, and co-conspirator to his antihero, Winston Smith, here Julia Worthing gets a backstory.
She grew up in Semi-Autonomous Zone 5, previously Kent; had her first affair with a Party member at the age of 14; and won a Hero of the Socialist Family badge for denouncing her mother. As an adult, Julia works in the Ministry of Truth's Fiction Department as a mechanic, repairing and maintaining the machines that design plots for the mind-controlling entertainment of the masses. She lives a straightforward, self-serving life, outwardly obedient to Party regulations and a member of the Junior Anti-Sex League, but is secretly involved in a number of minor sexual affairs, trading in black-market goods for the simple pleasures of real chocolate. Newman's version expands Julia considerably, and appealingly, as a character increasingly wrestling with not only the contradictions between lived experience and the Party's narrative but also questions of right and wrong.
Newman (The Country of Ice Cream Star) offers a tragic and harrowing story in lovely, evocative prose, revealing all the ugliness and beautiful possibility of a world hopelessly scarred by hate and manipulation and yet, somehow, still capable of hope. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia