Coming Up for Air

By: George Orwell

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis: An insurance salesman desperately tries to recapture his youth in this &“charming&” comic novel by the iconic British author (The New York Times). George Bowling is having a crisis. Not a loud, unsightly one, but a small, desperate one. His days are occupied by an unfulfilling insurance job; his nights spent worrying about his mortgage, marriage, expanding waistline, and what seems to be a certain prospect of World War II looming on the horizon. So when George unexpectedly hits it big on a lucky horse, he spends the windfall on the only thing he ever knew to make him happy: his childhood. George travels back to his boyhood home of Lower Binfield, swimming in vivid memories of worry-free bliss, sights, sounds, smells, and emotions of a pre-war world. But while the idyllic village in George&’s head may not have seen battle, the reality may be more sobering than he is prepared to deal with. Penned with Orwell&’s trademark insight and passion, Coming Up for Air is an elegiac look at memory and desire at a desperate moment in England&’s history.