Julia by Andrea Newman

1984 is one of my favourite novels.

On the surface at least, it's relentlessly grim and depressing novel of a brutal Anglo-American Stalinist dictatorship. A regime that seems useless at providing for its people, but ruthlessly efficient in the control and suppression of its citizens. This applies especially to the educated middle class who comprise the Outer Party, and a kind of aristocracy, the Inner Party who form the government. 

Read with a more sceptical eye, some of the books more absurd and comedic elements can raise a smile. Julia, our hero's love interest, is a member of the Junior Anti-Sex league. An organisation founded by the party to discourage young women from having sex in favour of artificial insemination. Unless you happen to be a keen follower of Andrea Dworkin, it's unlikely such an organisation would have much support or success.  

It's Julia, who wears a narrow scarlet sash, emblem of the Junior Anti-Sex League, around her waist just tightly enough to bring out the shapeliness of her hips who's the subject of Andrea Newman's latest novel. It's a kind of companion volume to 1984, not a prelude, not a sequel but with elements of both. Rather like a franchise film, it takes the basic setting of novel and a few key scenes to push in all sorts of interesting and surprising directions.

One of the major criticisms of George Orwell is how undeveloped, even two-dimensional his female characters are. Julia in 1984 is one of the "better" ones, but this book reminds you just how much of Julia we don't know. For example, we never even learn her surname, let alone much of her background, and her work, that of mechanic is barely mentioned. 

Andrea Newman does a great job filling these gaps in an interesting and convincing way. We learn of Julia's day-to-day life at the hostel where she lives with about 30 other young women. We learn of her job, in some detail, maintaining and occasionally repairing electromechanical equipment in the Fiction Department of the Ministry of Truth, where she and Winston Smith work and first meet. 

But this is way more than a retelling of 1984 from another character's perspective. Instead it's goes much further, with some significant plot twists and perspectives of its own. Newman does a fantastic job of this without changing Julia's character from the original novel. In 1984 after all, it's Julia that makes the initial pass that starts the relationship. It's Julia who seems to know how to operate in Air Strip One's flourishing black market. Her choice of safe spaces are better than the room above the junk shop that Winston chooses, and where they eventually get caught by the Thought Police.

I had a few reservations. Minor characters like Parsons and Syme feature in the story in ways that change their characters. I didn't like that. The book is probably a bit long, although Orwell, who was very seriously ill with TB when he wrote 1984 told friends it should have been longer and more rounded. That's harsh but he may have made a point.

In these rather puritanical times, I was also pleasantly surprised by some of the sex scenes (Orwell was rather prudish) and some of detail of the horrors "in Love." That's the term Julia uses to those imprisoned in the Ministry of Love, the terrifying Gestapo-like organisation that imposes ruthless discipline on party members. My favourite scene in the book featured a famous, fearless old female revolutionary, hard, needle-sharp and still ruthless, not least on herself in Love.

This is an excellent book, and everyone who's enjoyed 1984 would enjoy reading it.