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Coming Up for Air

Penguin Modern Classics

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Coming Up for Air

By: George Orwell
Narrated by: Daniel Rigby
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George Orwell's paean to the end of an idyllic era in British history, Coming Up for Air is a poignant account of one man's attempt to recapture childhood innocence as war looms on the horizon.

George Bowling, forty-five, mortgaged, married with children, is an insurance salesman with an expanding waistline, a new set of false teeth - and a desperate desire to escape his dreary life. He fears modern times - since, in 1939, the Second World War is imminent - foreseeing food queues, soldiers, secret police and tyranny. So he decides to escape to the world of his childhood, to the village he remembers as a rural haven of peace and tranquillity. But his return journey to Lower Binfield may bring only a more complete disillusionment ...

'Very funny, as well as invigoratingly realistic ... Nineteen Eighty-Four is here in embryo. So is Animal Farm ... not many novels carry the seeds of two classics as well as being richly readable themselves'
John Carey, Sunday Times

(P) Penguin Audio 2021

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For me this is book is up there with 1984 and Animal Farm. The ideas within are later to be echoed in these his most famous works. In many ways a reading of Coming Up for Air is helpful towards fully understanding the themes of 1984 in particular - eg there is a fascinating section on hate speech. It is well written, insightful and gets you thinking … and just as the book was anticipating the move toward a Second World War in 1939, so the the mood and ambience of this book can be easily translated to our own age as we anticipate the continued decline of our quality of life in the 2020’s and the increasing international tensions and collapse of modern society gathers momentum. At it’s core is the gradual stripping away of our humanity and quality of life and the removal of our inherent spirituality as the political systems that shape our world tighten their grip.

The books is well read but for me the voice sounds too young for the central character - however it is the best narrated version currently available as far as I am aware and definitely still worth getting. If you enjoy his other works then this is a MUST!

An important book for our times!

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If you have any nostalgia, aspiration, or hope remaining in middle age, Orwell will crush that right out of you. Try not to wince at the casual misogyny and anti-semitism and just drift along with the hopelessness of it all. Daniel Rigby gets the tone spot on with his voicing of our putative 'hero'. Marvellous stuff.

A lesser known gem

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A writing masterclass from George Orwell; concise and brilliant, conjuring a lost world and a man on a quest to revisit his past. Pitch perfect narration too. I loved it.

Beautifully written and observed

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Writing this review in late December 2022.
Orwell’s narrative flow is enthralling. The sense of bewilderment of the middle aged protagonist, George Bowling between the wars and between both and death seem uncannily pertinent to our time.
The magic of youthful optimism is as deftly described as the horror of older aged acceptance.
An essay on the importance of paying attention to one’s gut feeling of what’s important.

Love this book

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I give this straight fives but that's with a bit of rounding up. The quality of Orwell's prose is evident though if you have read his best known works and are looking for something more I would recommend Burmese Days in preference (and that assumes you have finished Keep the Aspidistra flying, which is one of my all time audible favourites).

The main interest here is the very detailed picture it portrays of daily life in Britain just before the war: the grind, the financial struggles, the things ordinary people could buy and the things they couldn't. Orwell was alive at the time and knew what he was writing about.

Orwell almost at his best

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