Julia

by Sandra Newman

London, chief city of Airstrip One, the third most populous province of Oceana. It's 1984 and Julia Worthing works as a mechanic fixing the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Under the ideology of IngSoc and the rule of the Party and its leader Big Brother, Julia is a model citizen—cheerfully cynical, believing in nothing and caring not at all about politics. She routinely breaks the rules but also collaborates with the regime whenever necessary. Everyone likes Julia. A diligent member of the Junior Anti-Sex League (though she is secretly promiscuous) she knows how to survive in a world of constant surveillance, Thought Police, Newspeak, Doublethink, child spies and the black markets of the prole neighbourhoods. She's very good at staying alive.

But Julia becomes intrigued by a colleague from the Records Department—a mid-level worker of the Outer Party called Winston Smith—when she sees him locking eyes with a superior from the Inner Party at the Two Minutes Hate. And when one day, finding herself walking toward Winston, she impulsively hands him a note—a potentially suicidal gesture—she comes to realise that she's losing her grip and can no longer safely navigate her world.

Seventy-five years after Orwell finished writing his iconic novel, Sandra Newman has tackled the world of Big Brother in a truly convincing way, offering a dramatically different, feminist narrative that is true to and stands alongside the original. For the millions of readers who have been brought up with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, here, finally, is a provocative, vital and utterly satisfying companion novel.

Genres: Fiction, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Retellings, Feminism, Audiobook, Classics

400 pages, Hardcover

First published October 19, 2023

Reviews

[Jack Edwards · Rating 2 out of 5]

Throw me in Room 101 and you'll find me locked in there with only this book to read.............

Normally I love a (feminist) literary retelling but -- though it was fun to dive back into Orwell's 1984 and reimagine events from Julia's perspective -- this book only made me appreciate how much better Orwell's original was. Of course the comparison is inevitable, and tackling a modern classic is a respectfully ballsy risk, but this only proves that Orwell's 1984 truly is a timeless, untouchable masterpiece.

'Julia', on the other hand, kind of reads like one of those books published in the post-Hunger Games teen-dystopia craze around 2014 with nothing especially exciting to say. Winston Smith is belittled to such a one-dimensional weenie that I found it borderline cringeworthy, and the ideological discussion is basic, if not nonexistent. I'm sad because I expected this to be a new favourite, but at least it made me want to read 1984 again to wash myself clean of this.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Winston was more interested in 'Spanking Stories', of which she remembered only that there was spanking, some of which was done with a shoe

Yep, that really is a genuine quotation from this book (location 1633 in my Kindle edition). Not just does it exemplify the 'lite' way in which this book re-writes Orwell's just-as-relevant-today 1984, but it showcases some of the clumsy writing (spanking stories contain... spanking) and an almost prurient interest in sex. Julia in the original does indeed have a wayward sensuality which is used to encode her propensity not to conform to the diktats of Big Brother but pushing this to the extreme as this book does (complete with descriptions of Winston's limp penis, lots of pseudo-daring mentions of masturbation, and their rather romance novel embraces (see quotations below) just cheapens the message of the original and makes this novel sound rather childish.

The blurb states: 'Julia is a model citizen - cheerfully cynical, believing in nothing and caring not at all about politics' already highlighting quite a departure from Orwell's bleak vision where this kind of freedom to even be cynical about the totalitarian dictatorship has been obliterated and is another example of where this book doesn't live up to its predecessor, giving itself some wiggle room to be less grim and despairing.

To be honest, I'm really not sure what the point of this book is. It does touch on the plight of women in an extremist state - but Atwood's been there before with The Handmaid's Tale which, again, is more powerful, more terrifying and more convincing than Julia.

Newman does go overboard with the interrogation and torture scenes, especially Room 101, but to my taste blood and gore isn't a replacement for the icy political analysis of Orwell. It also feels like the exposition and explanations in this book - the two plus two equals five concept, or even Room 101 itself - are over-explained as if we're not going to get them - quite different from Orwell's clean, precise prose which shatters with its uncompromising brevity and clarity.

The really big disappearance in Julia is any kind of ideological underpinning to Newman's world - though, to be kind, perhaps the assumption is that readers will come to this in addition to 1984 and, hopefully, not instead of that original. The most monstrous thing about Orwell's work is the underlying cold logic of totalitarianism, which is self-perpetuating and quite self-conscious about its own remorseless brutality and inhumanity.

There's more plot in this book than I would prefer, not least a coda where despite O'Brien making his speech about breaking and hollowing out Julia, she still survives all her horrific injuries, witnesses the collapse of the Big Brother system and goes off to fight for the resistance with a hopeful ending. It reminded me of all those YA dystopias where a whole system is brought down by a pretty teen and her boyfriend.

So, would I recommend this? Not really. Not just does Orwell not need any kind of intervention or companion piece but his chilling and desolate warning seems all the more pertinent today with the rise of the extreme Right across the globe alongside leftist authoritarian states (and Newman is quite specific in having her resistance fighting against the 'red dictatorship', quite a blinkered and one-sided view). On a day when we have seen the Tory Home Secretary using Doublethink to call a protest for peace a 'hate march' and incite far-Right neo-Nazi extremists like the English Defence League to clash violently with the Met Police at the Cenotaph, watering down Orwell's vision, sexing it up and confining it to a 'red' menace seems unconvincing, a little irresponsible and kind of missing the point to me.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the clocks strike 13 once again, it’s time to venture back to Oceania and experience that dystopia with fresh eyes — or other eyes. That’s exactly what Sandra Newman does in her subversive new novel, “Julia.”

With the approval of the Orwell estate, it’s a retelling of “1984” from the perspective of Winston Smith’s lover. The effect of that single shift is uncanny: The world Julia describes is entirely familiar but subtly altered from the one Winston experiences.

In addition to filling out the tragedy of Julia’s adolescence, Newman introduces several ingenious twists that let the plot proceed largely as expected but with curiously different implications.

Except for one extraordinary scene, everything Newman does takes place within the confines of that grim original story. Somehow, she has stuck her tweezers into Orwell’s bottle and rebuilt the ship pointing the other way.

Many of the characters, the Ministries of Truth and Love, the ever-shrinking dictionary, the constantly rewritten histories, the Two Minutes Hate, the endless war with Eurasia (or is it Eastasia?) and all your favorite horrors from “1984” are here.


But while “Julia” depends on Orwell for its architecture, the novel’s ironic tone is Newman’s own. By switching the perspective from Winston, she has effectively expanded the story’s palette.

The realm Newman describes is no more free nor tolerant than the one Orwell made famous, but it’s given considerably more room to. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘And who are you? I seem to have forgotten.’
‘I am Julia.’
‘Oh, yes. You betrayed me. I remember. They told me about it so many times.’
‘I did. I should like to have saved you, but I had no choice.’
‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘That’s the horrid thing. One has no choice, and yet one must live through it exactly as if one had.’

After the trend of recontextualising Greek mythology through a female lense, the next step seems to be recontextualising classic literature - which I, for one, think is a really fun, exciting idea. Quite dangerous perhaps, because it can easily blow up in an author's face, but that shouldn't be a reason for not rummaging around in someone else's work.

"Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living , or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves."

Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of my favourite books, which makes a work like this only more exciting. And I did initially fall into the trap of constantly comparing Julia to Nineteen Eighty-Four, in language used (for some reason, words like "having a crush on" and "dopily" sound.. off), but especially in its worldbuilding. Does this fit in what we know from the original novel, would that work? But then you also have to remind yourself that the original is told as filtered through Winston Smith.

Dear reader, I soon got over myself, and let all that go. And that is in great part because of Sandra Newman's excellent work - I got swept up in Julia's story, in what happened in her young life, in how she approached the life in Airstrip One.

"When a shop had been singled out for destruction by the marshals, she happily threw bricks through its windows. If a book was handed to her, she gladly tossed it into the waiting fire. Who didn’t like the sweet, hysterical sound of breaking glass? Who didn’t like the brave smell of gasoline and the brightness of the conflagration?"

Julia in this book has a lot more agency than Smith has in his book - yes, she endures a lot of horrible experiences (including some sexual abuse, and a lot of physical violence, not to mention the eye-watering rigmarole of Room 101), but she also finds it in herself to refocus her thoughts, to fight back, in some way. This can be a problem for you: the original novel more or less grinds down any idea of hope, or a future. The state is all powerful, and will even destroy the love you feel for others. The state always wins. There literally is no escape. Julia proposes that there may be a way out (although there's strong hints that whatever changes, everything is cyclical).

Winston Smith is more of a background character in Julia's life. She thinks him attractive, but she isn't so much in love with him (she is with someone else). She likes quite a lot of people, including women. This too might be a problem for you. The idea of 'love conquers all except it doesn't' sits firmly at the centre of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and you could see that as being weakened by the notion that Julia isn't all that into Winston. I'm being wishy-washy here, because I haven't made my own mind up yet.

"The day following that afternoon at the church, Julia came to work to find Essie had a replacement. This was a very willing but ignorant girl with the preposterous name of Typity. It was one of the new ultra-Party names; its letters stood for ‘Three-Year Plan In Two Years’. The fate of such names was to be resented by their bearers, and, with each new person Typity met, the first words from her mouth were a hasty, ‘Everybody calls me Tippi.’

Julia lives in a women's hostel, with a lot of other Outer Party women in their twenties. Here we're introduced to Nationalities - a Nationality basically is a person of colour, who is part of the Outer Party (like Julia and Winston), but is still looked down upon by the Inner Party. I found this an interesting addition to Orwell's world, but in the end the role of Nationalities in the novel is small, a couple of background characters.

There is a big twist, which I won't spoil, that completely recontextualises Nineteen Eighty-Four and Julia's part in it. It literally changes everything, and it's so dramatic I wonder what people will think of it. I thought it was a daring, almost shocking take on the original, but Newman makes it work. Julia also has a tendency to make completely clear what remains opaque in Nineteen Eighty-Four, but then switch the opaqueness to other, new things.

Some people will get hung up on the 'feminist' moniker, I suppose, but as far as I can see 'feminist' literally means 'from a woman's point of view', that's how it read like to me. So you get young Outer Party women being abused by Inner Party men, then get pregnant and having illegal abortions - but to me that completely fits in Orwell's world, surely.

Julia offers hope (albeit laced with cyanide), where Nineteen Eighty-Four offers none. I think that's where opinion will be split on whether this novel is succesful or not. I think it's largely succesful, and it was an engrossing, sometimes harrowing and terrifying read, quite beautifully composed.

(Thanks to Mariner Books for providing me with an ARC through Edelweiss)

[Mugren Ohaly · Rating 1 out of 5]

There’s no reason for this to exist.

[Blaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Update 10/24/23: Reposting my review to celebrate that today is publication day!

All her life, Julia had obeyed the unwritten rules that kept her far from guilt. She had known who was safe, and felt an unfeigned disgust for unsafe people. Instinctively she’d loved the lucky and clever. If she ever took a risk, it wasn’t for fools. It wasn’t for the dead or those half-dead. It was actually cruel to give them hope.
…
‘So you may take this as a fact. You are not to be harmed. You will believe this, I hope, before you leave this room. You are one of our people and no one can harm you again. This I can promise. Now, sit.’ He gestured toward an armchair. ‘We have a great deal to discuss.’
…
‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘That’s the horrid thing. One has no choice, and yet one must live through it exactly as if one had.’

Thanks to NetGalley and Mariner Books for sending me an ARC of Julia in exchange for an honest review.

Julia is a companion novel to Nineteen Eighty-Four. It tells the same basic story, but from Julia’s perspective rather than Winston’s (and with a couple of extra chapters that extend the story). In the same way that Wide Sargasso Sea would make no sense without having first read Jane Eyre, I cannot imagine this novel would work as a standalone as too much context is not explained within these pages.

Julia had some aspects I enjoyed. I just reread Nineteen Eighty-Four to have it fresh in my mind, and I was struck all over again by Winston’s hatred of Julia before he actually meets and talks to her. He’s kind of like a modern day incel, and seeing Julia recognize that “lust and rage” within him and ridicule him for it was a nice corrective. The author made great use of small details and minor characters from the original book to give this story depth. How did Julia get the note she passed to Winston to begin their affair? Why did Parsons and Ampleforth get arrested? This story provides an answer to those and many other questions. And there is much more generally about the mechanics of life inside and outside London, the bombings and the violence, as well as about the black market and the proles and how they live, which was all interesting.

But is Julia as great as the blurb claims? Is it “truly convincing,” “vital and utterly satisfying”? I’m afraid not, for reasons large and small. It rarely dips into the political explanations that help make the original novel so riveting. On a surface level, this book is more graphic than the original, both in terms of violence and in terms of sex and sexuality. One of the extraordinary things about Nineteen Eighty-Four is that it appeals to people of all moral and political stripes (we just seem to argue about which side is trying to Thought Police the other). But I expect a substantial number of potential readers will be turned off by the author’s decision to include a rather graphically described abortion in the early pages, a fair bit of on-page sex, and quite a bit of profanity.

But my issues with Julia go to the heart of the story being told, and to the way it interprets—I would say misinterprets— Nineteen Eighty-Four. And please know I don’t say that lightly, as this novel is authorized by the Orwell estate. But I would argue that a huge part of the enduring appeal of the original novel is its utter hopelessness. That version of Oceania is a tyrannical, fascist, totalitarian state led by true believers who will stop at nothing to preserve their power and seem poised to rule forever. Winston Smith believes himself to be engaging in a fatal act of rebellion merely by writing a diary and daring to yearn for a small bit of freedom, and he is utterly broken for it. That version of Oceania is simply terrifying. Julia, on the other hand, presents a much less powerful Oceania that is led by just another bunch of old, hypocritical men who come up with ‘rules for thee but not for me.’ Julia Worthing is a sex-positive woman who commits sexcrime, but not really thoughtcrime, because to her it’s all a game of trying to live right, limit mistakes, have cards to play if something goes wrong. All of which makes this version of Oceania far more pedestrian. And that’s without even talking about the three biggest changes this book makes: 1) having Julia agree to work with O’Brien and the Thought Police in Part Two to seduce and entrap Winston and the others, 2) despite her complicity, Julia is taken to the Ministry of Love and tortured for months but somehow is not broken, and 3) extending the story so that just a few months after the end of Nineteen Eighty-Four Oceania is invaded and seemingly defeated by the Brotherhood.

Julia certainly swings for the fences. I’m sure the author is going to sell a lot of books, and I’m good with that. She obviously worked hard to weave her story in and around the original. It has a definite point of view, an interesting ending, and it will encourage you to reexamine certain elements of Nineteen Eighty-Four. This book’s version of the scene in Room 101 alone makes it worth the read. That said, the author is going to get a lot of criticism from people like me who might have loved what is ultimately a very professional fan fiction but just think the author made some fundamental alterations to the story that cheapened what makes the original so great, and I’m ok with that too. But even though I didn’t love it, I’d still recommend trying this book to anyone who’s read Nineteen Eighty-Four.

[Dee (in the Desert) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 “it’s not you, it’s me” stars. I was really very intrigued by this authorized, feminist retelling of “1984”, but the honest truth is I just find dystopian literature upsetting & a real slog-fest these days due to the fact that we’re seemingly living in a pretty awful one ourselves. It's pretty true to the original and very well-written, which of course inspires just too much introspection from this particular rather world-weary reader…

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Dan · Rating 1 out of 5]

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped."
- Nineteen Eighty-Four

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]]

Huh, the Orwell estate approved Sandra Newman to write a feminist retelling of 1984, so that sounds pretty interesting and I'm hopeful.

[Madeleine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hyperbolic blurb reviews and the fact that I’m teaching the original at A level of course led me to preorder ‘Julia’ and read it as soon as I could.
I’m disappointed. The potential was there to create a radical retelling with a genuinely 21st century feminist Julia. The thing that immediately put me off was the early use of the c- word and a fair bit of on-page sex. Yawn. Genuinely wondering why authors do this. It’s not necessary, and in this case did not add anything. Yes ok we get it, Julia loved sex, but did Orwell need to depict sex scenes and use vile language? Surely if one learns anything from reading any of Orwell’s work it is that clarity and craftsmanship do not require tawdry tricks to engage the reader. This aspect was also disappointing on a feminist level. The idea of a woman using sex-as-power is very 1990s (again, yawn) and, in my opinion, the patriarchy gets the last laugh on this. It would have been far more interesting to explore what Julia could achieve without having to use her body. Perhaps she couldn’t in Oceania; maybe that’s the point? Perhaps as women we will never be free from our ‘vesselhood’, but with this respect I believe that other authors have explored this far more stunningly. Margaret Atwood in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’; Naomi Alderman in ‘The Power’. I wonder what they would have done with ‘Julia’? (Seriously- was Atwood asked?)

The additional characters were a little flat and too briefly developed, especially in the final chapters which take us beyond the end of the original novel. I’m not sure that we should have met BB with a real name. Was this meant to be anticlimactic? It was, but not in a particularly profound way. A bit limp. Again, perhaps deliberate but just not enough of a reposte, for me.

The bits I appreciated were the links with the original- the dust, the paperweight, the mother issues, the direct pasting of dialogue; the plot mirroring - all skilfully handled. The plot twist in Julia’s role was excellent, but not dark enough.

I’m aware that this is all quite negative. I’m trying to like the book because I really wanted to love it. I just expected “a feminist retelling of Julia” to be stronger, more breathtaking, more assertive. There are big swerves away from the plot so why not go larger? Or be far more subtle. But a few timid steps away from the power and horror of Orwell’s nightmare vision just doesn’t work.

Ultimately, perhaps any attempt to repackage Orwell’s 1984 is going to be difficult due to its genuinely iconic status. The main fault in the 1948 novel for anyone reading it post the 1960s is indeed Julia’s submissive character. If we want to go all poststructuralist about it, then yes the silences in the text reveal the context. I would suggest that a voice attempting to speak into that silence, at a distance of 75 years, could have been a bit braver and louder.

[AndiReads · Rating 5 out of 5]

These days this sort of book just isn't for the faint hearted. If you are reading this review though, I bet you will love it. The estate of George Orwell granted permission for this feminist retelling of 1984. Much of the setting is the same but our story is told through Julia, formerly only known by her first name and a foil to the story on Winston Smith.

Sandra Newman however has painted a complex character in Julia - giving us the inside line on who she is, what she thinks and what drives her actions including the fated moment when she passes a note to Smith. If you are a fan of 1984 I guarantee you will love this story. Newman has paid homage, while also adding electric details to a well known novel.
#marinerBooks #Julia #SandraNewman

[Dr. K · Rating 5 out of 5]

This felt like 1984 and handmaid's tale were put in a blender and the horror dial was set to an 11.

Obviously, this book follows Julia and her life in Oceania. We revisit familiar characters, and of course Winston Smith, and other concepts that Orwell left us: 2+2=5, room 101, rewriting history, newspeak, telescreens, big brother, etc etc etc. and I wasn't sure if and how the world would be expended beyond that.

And oh boy. This book left me more horrified than many of the horror books I typically read. The bleakness is akin to bleakness in movies like Children of Men and the Japanese movie Kairo (Pulse). The nightmares that Julia has, and are described so vividly, make the Saw movies comparatively tame. I'm using cinematic comparisons because this book is tremendously cinematic. The descriptions of horror linger and extend through every horrific detail. This is especially true of the 80% mark, when Julia is captured and tortured in the ministry of Love and experiences room 101. And what follows may well have broken my brain.

And the themes... oh how I love a good exploration of themes! In the feminist realm, there is a lot about reproductive coercion, maternal bonds, female friendships (and more than friendships), using sexuality to gain power, etc etc etc. but this book focuses most on the tension between Truth and Narrative, things Orwell explored almost a century ago and that continue to feel painfully relevant. The last few moments of this book are absolutely chilling in that regard, and I'll be thinking about this one for a while.

I try to be stingy with giving out five stars, but I can't imagine giving this retelling anything less. Colour me impressed. I'm so glad that the Orwell estate authorized this powerful counter-piece to the classic. Highly recommended if you enjoy female-centric dystopian/speculative fiction, have at least a cursory familiarity with the original book, and have a strong stomach for physical and psychological torture.


With that, I think it's time for my banana. (The mild spoiler here is that an Important Character looks forward to their daily banana)

I only have one question for the author: Brave New World retelling when??

[S. ≽^•⩊•^≼ I'm not here yet · Rating 2 out of 5]

12 % is a very small amount for wanting to give any idea about a book, but I really couldn't handle it anymore. I think the retelling of one of the best books of all time was a mistake, I had too many expectations, I compared it with George Orwell and found nothing alike, even the main character Julia. The plot did not remind me of 1984, the detail about the places was poor, and worst of all was the characters, even their appearance description was different, Julia wasn't one I used to know and honestly, I didn't want to continue reading and destroy her image!

Thanks to Granta Publications for ARC via NetGalley, and apology for my harsh honest review.

[Robert Oakley · Rating 1 out of 5]

An unnecessary book

This novel is supposed to give a female perspective on the dystopian reality of 1984 as seen by Julia, the lover of Winston Smith. In the first part of the novel, it does so. But it falls far short of 1984. There are no discussions of ideas as in the original. Most importantly, the Party is shown to be weak; the horror of 1984 was that there were no real opponents of the party and no chance of it losing power. Julia will sell copies to people who were impressed by the original. It is only an imitation and not a good one.

[Kim Lockhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first thing to know about this novel is that the author gained the full support and blessing of the Orwell Estate to write this feminist retelling of 1984 from the perspective of Julia. Newman is faithful to the original, but also expands the original narrative in amazing, thoughtful, and satisfying ways. Expect more homage than pastiche.

The writing is bright, crisp, and engaging. Where Orwell's 1984 appears black and white in its purposefully bleak depiction of state-enforced drudgery, Newman's 1984 seems to be in full color. The author presents forced conformity in vibrant, alive, human terms, and introduces elements of rebellion and resistance early on. This is the 1984 I would have enjoyed having as a companion piece when we read Orwell in high school.

There are many subtleties the reader may glean from the narrative. The description of the "plot machinery" for books is immediately reminiscent of Chatbot GPT, a thread connecting the original story to today's concerns about AI. We can actually well imagine the idea of a machine that writes books.

The focus, of course, is about how the story changes when we flip the view from Winston to Julia, and what can we learn from seeing the same story from a different center? How might we have underestimated Julia? This version of Julia is capable and daring. She fiercely protects her individuality from homogenization, and she knows how to game the system. One gets the impression that there is no problem that she cannot solve, no dare she would back down from. She is Hell on Wheels in an environment which believes both that Hell has been eradicated, and that all fire and ambition have been excised from society.

Julia sees the absurdity of the roles the people play: working hard to affect blank faces, as if pretending to be robots, while relying on robots to randomize their work, and displaying fake effusive enthusiasm for the state.

Again, drawing subtle parallels to modern day, the author implies comparison of Inner Party members to the Billionaire Class, those who try to convince us that they've reached positions of power due to their ingenuity and skills, rather than their inherited wealth and access to nepotism. In contrast, Julia does have actual skills, and she knows how to use them to her advantage, how proximity to power can be leveraged.

As crafty, intelligent, and savvy as Julia is, she is as vulnerable to fear as anyone else under such constant surveillance and forced enthusiasm compliance. Early in the novel, the author relates an episode, which quickly rockets from mild concern to heart-hammering frightening consequences. It's clear that no amount of bravado can prepare one to witness the brutality of jack-booted thugs invested with authority.

Julia experienced a devastatingly painful betrayal very early in her life, so no level of tough exterior can insulate her from the fear that it might happen again. It's as if her subconscious is engaged in prescient foreshadowing. This is another example of how Newman's version of 1984 both expands on the core principles of the original, and widens the view. Not only do we get the benefit of valuable backstory, but also we see many more groups of people represented: people of color, various ages of people, gay people. These folks seem to have been missing in Oceania before. We even see a little of the stories of the wounded veterans of the useless wars being waged continuously.

The author demonstrates that the powerful always pit one group against another as a form of deflection. The hypocrisy of political boogeyman-making is added to the hypocrisy of oligarchy packaging itself as egalitarianism. Capitalists and communists, the privileged and the poor, the East and the West, all demonize each other to their own detriment, never thinking to join forces against the real troublemakers of the world.

The beauty of Newman's version of 1984 is that the author includes a shocking number of people flouting the cult-like rules, and loads of clandestine activities of all kinds. Humanity resists both oppression and repression. The greatest displays of passion are those which require a bit of risk. In this story, Julia further reflects this boldness in one other important way: she engages in emancipated sex. We are accustomed to seeing female characters who incorporate sex in pursuit of a relationship, in search of love, or even as a tool of revenge or jealousy. Julia has no need of such pretenses or moral justifications. She has sex for the simplest reason of all: because she wants to. Society has names for a woman like that, and most are pejorative. If a man wants to engage in serial affairs, unencumbered by obligation or responsibility, he is called a "Ladies' Man," a "Playa," or at worst, maybe a Lothario. He is not called a slut, a whore, or a nymphomaniac. (Only recently has society come up with "man whore" which is also unsatisfying. It's like saying female serial killer.)

Julia is in control of her liasons, deciding on whom, when, and where, and she is unburdened by guilt or shame. She seizes real agency in an otherwise stifling environment. Her only concerns are about not getting caught, and about whether the sex will be good enough to justify the risk. It's almost a cost/benefit analysis, the way she's separated sex from emotional attachment. Winston, on the other hand, has more complicated motivations. He initially associates Julia with the State, and conflates his desire for her with his desire to screw the system. It's a little disturbing, the rage he funnels into his trysts with Julia. It sets up a harbinger of dangerous collision.

The narrative continues to zip along with ever-increasing indulgent highs, and equally increasing and unsettling lows, like a roller coaster that picks up speed in the turns. Then suddenly, with a jolt, we find ourselves firmly and uncomfortably in Julia's shoes. She has made impossible choices before, and now it seems she will have to do so again, partially because one impossible choice always opens up a door for another. It is this predicament which shatters our illusions about truth, goodness, and sacrifice.

Julia undergoes a hands-on education in the supremacy and surprising complexity of hate. It is the main driver of everything that happens, if you think about it. A cursory look around will confirm it. Love, compassion, empathy, sympathy, those are all well behind the leader in the race to rebuild society. And it is always being rebuilt. In this context, Peace isn't real. You must always be at war, one way or another. It solidifies the us vs. them, creates opportunities to shape public opinion, and focuses discontent on a group other than the powerful. First there was Sun Tzu's The Art of War; now we have The Art of Hate. It was always there. We just didn't recognize our own invisible institutional manifesto.

Ironically, with his misanthropy and misogyny, Winston probably could have learned to deeply hate, too. But, he is too far removed from actual discomfort to align with revolutionaries. He is all bluster, more interested in complaining than taking any action to change anything. He's the annoying political centrist, and quite unfeeling about the plight of others. Due to his casual acts of cruelty, it becomes easier for Julia to hate Winston. But, it does not get easier to play her role. Julia can feel how slipping into hate is a kind of erasure, a gradual loss of self. As Julia experiences the increasingly deleterious effects of hate saturation, the city prepares for Hate Week. (Lest we feel superior to this concept, ask yourself if you've ever seen a Hate Parade. You have, even if you didn't call it that.)

The author takes us inside the atmosphere of a people hyped up and manipulated into being violently angry at their perceived enemies. The power of gathering together to protest, or even riot, is an intoxicating heady atmosphere, one that Julia revels in. At this point, Julia still has not fully committed to the idea of hate; it intrigues her more than it entices her. She observes what one might call punishment addicts, people who can't get enough of hate and don't think that bad actors are getting enough of what's coming to them. These anger obsessives have lost their sense of self-awareness and are incapable of recognizing instances of projection or deflection. This may well be the author's social commentary on current cult-like followings. Hidden within that message is another warning: against Eugenics, which is always a feature of autocratic regimes. Newman's illustration of this authoritarian government is realistic: so repressive that it disappears dissenters, and tries to control every aspect of citizen life, down to their very thoughts.

As we approach the climactic tensile point we already know is coming, the writing becomes both more taut and somehow richer in depth. The philosophical questions become more boiled down and more desperate. Whom do you trust when there are cruel liars on all sides? The answer is obvious: no one. The system is unreliable, and therefore, untenable. Unfortunately, this does not preclude suffering. If the torture scenes in Room 101 traumatized you the first time, they will do so again in this one. It's an amazing symmetry to witness the torture of both Winston and Julia, to see that famous critical moment played out in detail.

The wild card would be the ending. If you could wrap up the story any way you wanted, what would you choose? I won't give anything away, except to say that Julia is resilient, smart, and brave, and that the ending is satisfying in ways you had not expected. This is the kind of book you re-read to see what you might have missed.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Mariner Books, an imprint of Harper Collins, for providing an early copy of this novel for review.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t love this book. I could see why it was important to write and to read, but I had I hard time investing in Julia’s character. She definitely fills a gap from the original 1984, but I didn’t enjoy Orwell's book either, particularly her character. However, I think there could be a lot of value in teaching both books together.

[Heather Moll · Rating 2 out of 5]

A companion novel to 1984, this attempts to flesh out the Julia of the original. It throws you into the world, so if you haven’t read 1984 (and if you haven’t I don’t know why you’d pick this up) you’ll be lost.

This isn’t the pithy prose of Orwell, and yet there was still a lot telling instead of showing as we see Julia navigate this authoritarian landscape.

This is billed as a feminist retelling but Julia is just exploited over and over while she cares about absolutely nothing, and even when she has growth we see in the end that it doesn’t even matter.

I struggled to understand Julia’s motivations. She’s apathetic for nearly the entire book and I could never tell if that’s a comment on this oppressive regime or just poor character development. Even when she hates Big Brother it was hard to see how she got there, and her final deliverance isn’t really a deliverance at all so I’m not sure what the point is. You can just read 1984.

This also needs trigger warnings for CSA.

I received an arc from NetGalley

[лічі · Rating 2 out of 5]

коли побачите десь зазначення, що ця книга — феміністичне переосмислення 1984 орвелла, не ведіться. це не воно, це радше фанфікш і переказ відомої нам історії з іншої сторони. і не скажу що дуже вдалий переказ, хоча є і кілька плюсів.

про що взагалі книга? про тоталітарний похмурий світ і політику великого брата з точки зору жінки, яка фігурує і "1984" як партнер-ін-крайм головного героя.
з того, що мені сподобалось:
— читалось доволі легко в порівнянні з оригінальним твором орвелла
— розділи про дитинство джулії в наз були ну дуже цікавими, бо якраз таки розкривали щось нове, невідоме
— атмосфера стрьомного тоталітарного світу збереглась і читати було моментами тривожно.

з того що мені не сподобалось:
— головна героїня яка просто марить чоловіками і сексом
— показова безкарність джулії за доволі серйозні злочини
— абсурдність того що деколи відбувалось в книзі
і мені досі не зрозуміло навіщо написано цю книгу?

вона може сподобатись поціновувачам антиутопій, в англомовному букпросторі від неї прям фанатіють, книга точно має свого читача, але цей читач не я. мені не те що б не сподобалось, просто є відчуття втраченого часу, бо нічого нового чи цікавого з книги не винесла. але це тільки мої думки

[Taury · Rating 3 out of 5]

Julia by Sandra Newman is a retelling of 1984 from the perspective of Julia Worthing.
Julia in this version is smart, observant, and strategic. I appreciated seeing the world of Big Brother through a woman’s eyes, especially one who has figured out how to survive it in her own way. But as much as I liked the concept, I didn’t fully connect with the novel. Much of the book felt like it was happening at a distance. I found myself drifting in parts, and the story didn’t always pull me back in. There are moments that made me think differently about 1984 and about how women navigate power, control, and rebellion. I just wish it had grabbed me more emotionally. Maybe if I hadn’t gone in with such high hopes, I would’ve appreciated it more for what it is—a thoughtful, intellectual retelling that’s interesting, even if not fully satisfying.

[Daphna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Any attempt at the retelling of an iconic work of literature, any attempt to add perspective to it and to create, in its image, something new that would complement it and bring added value, takes a lot of courage. But courage isn't enough.

I have read a few such retellings, and the only two that I found exceptional in their own right were Jean Rhys's The Great Saragossa Sea, filling in the story of Jane Eyre's Mrs. Rochester, the mad wife in the attic, and John Banville's Mrs. Osmond which seamlessly created additional perspective for Henry James' Isabelle Archer from Portrait of a Lady.

This novel's mission, so it seems, is to flesh out the existence of women in George Orwell's 1984 through the character of Julia. My whole sense of it was that it failed to capture George Orwell's register, and was way too chatty, glib and modern, so that its penetration into the world that he had created was grating. The novel faithfully copies George Orwell's world, but I assume that copying his world wasn't the point; we already have it in the original novel. The novel's tone and rhythm sounded to me like a Newspeak product of the Fiction Department of the Ministry of Truth being created to serve an agenda.

There are a myriad of dystopian novels showing the specific plight of women in a totalitarian setting. The Handmaid's Tale is an example. This one, too, could have stood on its own as a reasonably good read. I don't see the added value of choosing to do so through the world of 1984.

Moreover, if Julia would have ended at the same point in time that 1984 ended, I don't think I would have been so scathing. But the last section was, to a certain extent, a subversion of Orwell's ending, and I don't see that as a legitimate choice. If the novel has latched on to his world, it should remain faithful to his take on this world. Orwell never let any light, not even a glimmer, into the world of 1984.

So if one reads this as a stand-alone dystopian novel with a woman as it's central character and the plight of women brought to its forefront, it's fine. Reading it as an extension of 1984 was, for me, discordant and intrusive. On the upside, I reread 1984 and it's still as potent as ever.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars

I loved seeing the events of 1984 through Julia’s POV. It was so much more developed and nuanced in my opinion. Julia was definitely more fleshed out.

This was a 4-star read for me until near the end. I felt it should have stopped at the end of chapter 21 as the last 50 pages dragged for me and felt unnecessary.

[Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm)]

After finishing Orwell's 1984, I was eager to explore this feminist retelling from Julia's point of view but sadly chose to DNF it. 👁️ (Extended thoughts below) 👇

CHP 01
We've arrived at our first mention of Newspeak, and Newman is really downplaying the severity of its intent, saying merely that it's "meant to purify everyone's mind", whereas Orwell explained that it was meant to narrow the range of thought. Is this a sign of Julia's limited understanding? Or is Newman placing less emphasis on the Party's villainous traits?

Winston has been deemed attractive (a rarity), so that helps explain Julia's attraction to him (which felt like it came out of nowhere in 1984).

Stop trying to make the smell of sweat sexy. It's not going to happen.

You needn't know all the latest Newspeak words or struggle to believe contradictory things. If you hated the enemy, you could be loved.

^ Fascism 101: declare an enemy and encourage everyone to hate said enemy.

Hmm... if you haven't read 1984, the end of chapter one will bear no significance. 🫤

First impression: Not sure how to feel about this yet. I'd like to see more about the Party, specifically how it aims to control people. And I'm hoping for more insights on Julia's motivations. Gotta keep reading...

CHP 02

At the guardroom, no one even blinked at the fact that Julia also signed out a plumber's auger. Of course, the guards were all blokes; perhaps they thought it was a necessary tool of menstruation.

^ Please tell me how anyone, no matter how stupid, could possibly think a plumber's auger could be needed for menstruation. 🤨

Julia lives in a dormitory located below the plumbing floor, so any water leaks drip down onto the beds. Julia quietly believes the Party structured things this way "to get on her nerves." This is the first indication we get of Julia having thoughts against the Party. Merely tepid...

Wow, pretty disturbing imagery at the end of Chapter 2. Graphic but effective.

CHP 04
We've made a hard turn from Julia discovering an aborted fetus floating with a turd in a bloody toilet bowl to rowdy airmen inventing profane versions of Newspeak like twatspeak, arsethink, and doublepluscunt, as well as them laughing at handbook examples of wrongthink such as "Farting during our Leader's speeches."

I've decided to DNF this book. Here's why 👇

Fifty-five pages in, and I think it's time to admit this book isn't for me. Firstly, the tone feels very erratic. And secondly, we're given glimpses of the surveillance state (e.g., toilet stalls with no doors, security cameras in changing areas, telescreens on every bed that spew propaganda), but it lacks a seriousness that was prevalent in Orwell's book.

The one place this book appears to shine is in its portrayal of how women experience life in Oceania and how there's a gross disconnect between the Party's anti-sex ideology and the exploitation of women. Even so, I'm finding it difficult to stay invested, so I've decided to set this book aside.

[Ensaio Sobre o Desassossego · Rating 3 out of 5]

"1984" foi e é um dos livros que mais me marcou, de tal forma que nos meus 26 anos de vida já o li 3 vezes (+1 adaptação gráfica). Ora, confesso que parti para esta leitura com algum receio. Afinal, para se mexer num livro da importância do escrito por George Orwell, era preciso saber-se o que se estava a fazer.

Primeiro de tudo, gabo a coragem à autora por ter pegado num clássico da importância do "1984" e ter contado a mesma história de outro ponto de vista. Penso que é preciso uma boa dose de coragem, mas também de insanidade para alguém se atrever a pegar numa história tão emblemática como esta e dizer "e se eu contasse isto de outra perspectiva?".
Além disso, acho esta ideia genial e o conceito de contar tudo o que acontece no "1984" pelos olhos de Julia é muito interessante.

Gostei muito das ideias que a autora apresenta neste livro, gostei da forma como coloca o leitor a pensar em coisas que não pensámos quando lemos o "1984", mas que estão lá. Mas como a história é contada do ponto de vista de um homem, não são referidas. Não são importantes para a personagem principal - que é um homem -, por isso, não são importantes para a história.

Assim como em "1984", não há esperança neste livro. No "1984" senti mais sufoco e angústia do que neste, mas também sei que seria muito difícil chegar aos níveis de genialidade de Orwell. Penso que isto advém do facto de o Winston prezar muito mais a liberdade, enquanto Julia apenas tenta sobreviver naquele mundo, é apolítica. Por isso, o livro escrito por Orwell é muito mais político.

O livro tem ainda alguma linguagem brejeira que não me lembro de ler no "1984" nem acho que fosse necessária para contar esta história e essa foi das partes que mais me incomodou.

Não esperem um novo "1984", até porque penso que não é esse o propósito do livro. Leiam-no como uma nova perspectiva, o olhar de uma mulher escrito por uma mulher sobre um dos livros mais importantes da história da literatura. "Julia" não veio para substituir "1984", mas sim para o complementar. E é sempre bom ler uma história conhecida com uma perspectiva diferente.

[David A Townsend · Rating 5 out of 5]

One had no choice, one must only live through it as if one had.

[alex]

DNF @ 32%

I'm throwing in the towel on this one. Obviously, I only got a third of the way through, but many of the issues Giulia identified in her (excellent) review were already evident to me at that point, and after the clearing scene, any remaining hope I had that Sandra Newman could successfully grapple with the sexism or rape apologia of the original was extinguished.

On that scene: Newman would have us believe that Julia's internal response to Winston's confession that he "wanted to rape [her]" is: "This was a far greater success than she could have anticipated." Yes, you read that right. The entire scene is re-framed to portray Winston's tendency towards violence as not a tendency at all, but a rational, reasonable response, at least in this single circumstance, to Julia's goading. His aggression, his open threats, his violent fantasies, that's all okay, because Julia finds masculinity (which I guess we're admitting = sexual violence?) suchhhh a turn on, and not only that, she was the mastermind behind it all. It was calculated. This is the response she wanted, actually!

Give me a fucking break. I don't know about you, but if the person I was interested in told me he wanted to rape me, that would not be my reaction, no matter how horny I was for tradmasc dudebros. If Winston were Julia's only option for copulation under a repressive regime, maybe I could believe it would be hers, but Newman goes to such lengths to ensure we know how much Julia loves to fuck, how little problem she has defying Big Brother so she can go about her extracurricular criminal fucking, that she's effectively drained this scene of any credibility or meaning whatsoever. In the original, it's revolting, but at least it's evocative. At least it meant... something. Here, it's impotent. Sterile. Flaccid.

Speaking more broadly: Newman's approach to the aforementioned sexism is to pepper these moments of silent defiance throughout. These are the parameters she must adhere to, after all - '1984 from Julia's perspective' is not quite the reimagining we were billed, as Newman is beholden to hit all the same plot beats in order for her version to fit within the canon, whose endorsement she somehow received. The problem is that in doing so, she renders Julia as a character utterly unbelievable - this is supposed to be a feminist retelling, and our female protagonist is too busy frothing at the mouth for "long hard thighs", "tight arse[s], "spent prick[s]" and "hairy thighs" (yes, again, and yes, that's all in the one passage) to ever so much as question, let alone condemn, male violence - Winston simpering and stupid, and the Big Brother regime laughably incompetent.

And this is what I mean about sterility. In 1984, we felt the stakes of Winston's actions, whether or not we knew those stakes to be true. It didn't actually matter how all-powerful Big Brother was; what mattered was the possibility of that power, and the impossibility of ever really comprehending the vast authority that lies behind the machinations of a surveillance state. But here, Newman comes right out and tells us: Winston's defiance was inconsequential all along. Where he believes he's done something radical by conversing with a prole man, "Julia dropped back and stooped to fiddle at her bootlaces so he wouldn't see her laughing. Poor Winston! He'd talked to a single prole, and felt he knew all there was to know about them! She didn't have the heart to tell him how many proles she'd dealt with over the years." Nothing he does is of any significance anymore, because Julia did it first. And his misogyny doesn't matter, because she's cool with it, actually. She's a cool chick who loves to fuck.

So, if you're undermining the anti-totalitarian messaging of the original by neutering the fictional totalitarian state in question, and perpetuating the same harmful gender dynamics Orwell lived out in his personal life, and wasn't a clever enough writer to imagine a world free from in his art, what's the point in retelling 1984 at all? I can't see one, and I don't see myself slogging through the remaining two thirds to find out.

[Michael B · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can’t imagine what it must be like to be paid to take a shit over the characters and legacy of a book as classic as 1984, but Newman does just that.

Despite the point of this novel being to give Julia more agency, she has about as much character as in 1984 (not much,) which makes this an absolute slog to read. She is passive in every aspect of her life, and goes along with whatever ridiculously contrived thing is happening to her at the moment. I realize one of the themes is that Julia has “no choices” in life, but this is a mockery of her character in 1984 who was a rebellious young woman entranced within the Party.

Mockery this book is - I lost count of the number of snide comments “recontextualizing” events from 1984 to make fun of Winston, Charrington, O’Brien, etc. It seems to be Newman’s goal to point out any perceived flaw from 1984, real or otherwise, and flout how superior she is. The party’s maxims are thrown away and replaced by a severely underwhelming “Everything is hate,” Winston is portrayed as a bumbling unaware idiot who cannot even notice Julia is 6 months pregnant, O’Brien is a melodramatic hack who steals catchphrases from other Inner Party members, it is a circus of trying to make you hate the original characters.

Not only are the characters assassinated, Oceania itself is. Gone is the totalitarian surveillance state where even talking in your sleep would have you doomed - in Julia, almost everybody we meet either lies daily, commits sexcrime often, deals with the prole black market, or bribes party officials to skirt the rules. It is even revealed the Inner Party don’t really believe in anything, and the entirety of the imprisonment of Symes, Ampleforth, Parsons, Julia, Winston, is all some stupid squabble about funding between Records and Fiction.

The last part of the book is the most ridiculous of all, transforming Oceania from one of the three global superpowers to some ineffectually run North Korea-esque country instead which is easily overtaken by some foreigners who have perfect education and regular “democratic” governments.

There is no gripping central message, nothing that leaves you thinking about the world around us, just a long series of events that I wish I had never read.

[Melanie Caldicott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dnf'd halfway through. There are many critical reviews of this which comment much better than I can. But I could not bear the boring prose, depressing discussions and gratuitous language and sex descriptions any longer. I just didn't think this was an intelligent companion to 1984 and if this is the best we can do with a modern retelling then I think we do the context and originality of Orwell's classic a disservice.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

After Julia survives torture in the Ministry of Love, including Winston's rats, she escapes London in the chaos of a military uprising against the regime. At the end, she finds herself in Big Brother's palace, which has been taken over by victorious resistance fighters who call themselves the Brotherhood of Free Men. She even meets Big Brother himself, a feeble and pathetic elderly man being kept alive for a show trial. The last scene has her pragmatically swearing loyalty to what appears to be the new regime, using the same words as O'Brien forced upon her and Winston ("Are you prepared to commit murder if it is necessary" etc). Although a lot happens to Julia, she doesn't really change. This conclusion seems to say that ideology is meaningless; I caught distinct echoes of TINA.

The violent downfall of Big Brother appears strangely ahistorical when you think about the fate of totalitarian communist regimes during Orwell's time. The USSR and PRC collapsed peacefully from within into authoritarian capitalism of differing kinds, although China still claims to be communist. North Korea of course remains a Stalinist dictatorship. I wondered, are the Brotherhood of Free Man capitalists? Their name is very unsubtly gendered, but otherwise ambiguous.

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.

[Crystal King · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having been intrigued and unsettled by George Orwell's "1984" since my high school and college days, I found Sandra Newman's "JULIA" a riveting, feminist retelling that breathes contemporary resonance into the classic dystopian narrative. The coined phrase, "Peace is Hate, Love is Hate," exemplifies societal constraints, mirroring 2023's real-world scenarios through a gender-focused lens. This modern iteration maintains the original's grim foresight while introducing a fresh narrative perspective.

Newman's "JULIA" is not only a compelling read for those familiar with "1984," but also offers a unique intersection of classical dystopian themes with modern feminist discourse, making it a significant read in today's socio-political climate. So much so that, in some ways, it may even be more unsettling to read than Orwell's original.. But despite that--or perhaps because of that--I couldn't put this novel down.