Review: Julia

Julia by Sandra Newman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a bit of a tag-along afterthought in my fall of dystopian literature. While I was finishing off 1984 with my class, I found out that a new novel came out that retold the 1984 story from Julia's point of view and that was simply too good to miss. Given how deeply male 1984 is as a novel and how two-dimensional Julia is in that book, seeing a retelling by a woman was just too interesting.

The result is an inspired re-reading of the story. I won't do any spoilers, but this novel goes beyond a simple re-telling. It is more complex and intriguing than that. Julia emerges as a real person, driven by circumstances and people which aren't even hinted at in the original 1984, but which oddly work in its context. And it is also, ultimately, much, much more hopeful.

Of course, the book has been controversial and, yes, the book also written with a distinctly feminist, left-learning slant with rather fluid sexual identities, shall we say? The Goodread reviews are mixed and mine is distinctly positive. My warning is, don't expect a scene by scene imitation of 1984, but take this as a creative re-telling. It doesn't slavishly follow the tone and details of 1984, nor does it replicate the almost oppressively male centered and honestly, casually misogynistic world of Orwell's original. It isn't a replacement, but a novel in its own right.

So, yes, read it! And, certainly, if you know 1984 well, compare and contrast the two. But judge it on its own merits, which, I think, are considerable.

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