Staff Pick
This savagely funny Orwell novel has been semi-ignored, which may be due to its unlikely title. (An aspidistra was once a common British houseplant that thrives on bad light and poor air, and it symbolizes the stuffy bourgeois — so this title is a wry "Hooray for the middle class!") As to the story, Gordon Comstock is a talented copywriter who decides to quit his "good job" and become a poet/bookseller. The results are brutal, but this is Orwell. The writing is lucid, deeply affecting, and darkly wonderful. Recommended By Bart K., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works in a grubby London bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rented room, trying to write. He is determined to stay free of the “money world” of lucrative jobs, family responsibilities, and the kind of security symbolized by the homely aspidistra plant that sits in every middle-class British window.
Synopsis
A pre-cursor to his more famous works of Animal Farm and 1984, Keep the Aspidistra Flying is Orwell's social commentary on capitalism's constraints. Orwell captures the struggles of an aspiring writer with almost pitch-perfect attention to psychological detail, exploring the gulf between art and life.
Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works in a grubby London bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rented room, trying to write. He is determined to stay free of the "money world" of lucrative jobs, family responsibilities, and the kind of security symbolized by the homely aspidistra plant that sits in every middle-class British window.
About the Author
GEORGE ORWELL (1903-1950) was born in India and served with the Imperial Police in Burma before joining the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was the author of six novels as well as numerous essays and nonfiction works.