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Title: A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell ISBN: 0-15-618065-0 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: June, 1969 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.2 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: One of Orwell's Best
Comment: Knowing what was finally going to come of Dorothy kept me until 2:30 AM this morning...and I wasn't disappointed.
Orwell cheats right out of the chute: In realizing that he may not know enough about women to write about our protagonist, he immediatedly removes her sexuality by telling us she is disgusted by the thought of "that." Nuff said. Our hero(ine) is now pretty much asexual.
What a story though. Plumbing the depths of faith and predestiny, Orwell weaves a fairly heavy tale of the motherless daugther of a grim and dispassionate minister obsessed only with his investments and petty theological particulars.
The minister's daughter loyally fills in the gaps, acting as the heart and soul of a failling church, praying her way against impossible odds while visiting the sick, recruiting new church goers, seeing to the buildings and her father's meals...and eventually completely wigging out.
Now the fun begins.
This is a warm and rewarding book, full of human insight and only a little bit of Orwell's patented socialist soap-boxing.
Rating: 4
Summary: Poignant, Evocative, and Only Slightly Flawed
Comment: Upon mention of George Orwell, "A Clergyman's Daugter" isn't usually the book that jumps into reader's minds, and compared to his polished masterpieces -- Animal Farm and 1984 -- the reason is understandable. Yet for fans of Orwell lies an undiscovered gem, a less understated yet deliciously piercing satire of early 20th Century England, flavored abundatly with the author's trademark social criticism and wicked humor. It's a book that leaves no stone unturned, challenging religion, gender, education, social class, and both the timely and timeless inadequacies and hypocrasies of which Orwell bore witness.
The book's title refers, fittingly enough, to the chief protagonist, Dorothy Hare. A girl in her late twenties, she begins the book as a militant religious devotee, shown best in a pin she always keeps with her, used for pricking herself in penance for committing the slightest misdeed -- sometimes drawing blood for thinking no more than an unholy thought. She is one daughter among "ten thousand others" who lives a grueling life under the stern command of her father, the pastor, a hardened man of stern disposition and resolute aloofness, whose awkening greeting to his daugter as the novel begins is a question of when breakfast will arrive.
With a misadventure that begins here and ends in a place both similar and entirely different, Dorothy meets affrronts to her life, her stature, her class, even the very faith upon which the whole of her existence resides. And as Dorothy is challenged to think of the world differently, so are we; a defining moment comes when she says, "it is not what we do that matters, it is how our thinking changes because of it." As a theme to the novel and a thesis which he brilliantly defends, Orwell succeeds without hesitation. (As a note, the above quote is paraphrased, and I appologize -- I've already returned the book to the library.)
Where he falters -- and indeed he does -- is in the structure of the novel and, occasionally, the consistency of his language. The myriad of poetic prose almost seems to contradict his otherwise honed and scathing wit, and while often pleasing to the ear, his effors seem at best superfluous, essentially inconcequential to his underlying message. Other reviewers speak with further clarity on this topic, and I'm particularly inclined with one's opinion that only "Joyce can write like Joyce," in other words, that Orwell's language in "A Clergyman's Daughter" could at the least be called affected.
But these gripes on language aside, Orwell succeeds in painting a stark, grim, yet gripping picture of a society gone awry, and beckons us to look within.
Rating: 4
Summary: Simply average
Comment: A clergyman's daughter, a plain girl, Mysterisously disappears with the town hoodlum and then loses her memory. This is the story of her life after this occurrs. It is not all I had come to expect from Orwell but it is an enjoyable book that keeps you reading for more. Read only if you are a die hard Orwell fan and then only if you are willing to accept a so-so work. Otherwise you can read it but don't expect to be blown away.
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Title: Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell ISBN: 0156468999 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 19 March, 1969 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Coming Up for Air (Harvest Book) by George Orwell, George Crwell ISBN: 0156196255 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: October, 1969 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Burmese Days by George Orwell ISBN: 0156148501 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: May, 1974 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell ISBN: 0156767503 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: September, 1973 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell ISBN: 015626224X Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: March, 1972 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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