Feminist retellings of classic works hinge on the author’s ability to pay homage to the original text while offering a new perspective on material events already known to readers. To reappropriate Emily Dickinson’s famous line: tell the truth, but tell it slant. Sandra Newman’s new novel Julia does this with aplomb. A retelling of George Orwell’s 1984 from the viewpoint of Winston Smith’s lover Julia, the book is wholly engaging in its own right yet also works as a reminder of Orwell’s genius and the real-world chill that cut through his horrifying dystopia.
Newman is the author of The Country of Ice Cream Star, longlisted for the Women’s Prize, The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, shortlisted for Guardian First Book Award, and The Heavens and The Men. A graduate of the University of East Anglia creative writing programme, she was chosen by the Orwell Estate for the retelling and has the approval of Orwell’s son, Richard Blair. One imagines they will be pleased with the result.
An immersive opening chapter — a rousing Hate session at the Ministry of Truth in London, where Julia works as a mechanic — reintroduces some familiar characters: linguist Syme, the mercurial O’Brien, Ampleforth the poet, taciturn Winston Smith, whose manly physique has not gone unnoticed by Julia. At 26, dark-haired and beautiful, Julia offsets the monotony and gloom of daily life with constant sexual fantasising. More than that, unlike her male colleagues, she has the initiative and pluck to act on these thoughts in secret, after-work trysts in the unmonitored prole districts.
In Julia, Newman has created a character with hidden depths, a woman who cheerfully espouses the Party line on chastity (or Anti-Sex) before doing whatever the hell she likes in her free time. It’s a refreshing change from the doomed narrative voice of 1984, a contrast that brings startling moments of humour when Julia and Winston get together.
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But these moments are rare: what enlivens this novel is its searing tone and the exactitude of the prose. Newman writes with great verve; her descriptions have the kind of energy and freshness needed for a successful retelling. Through her narrator’s jauntily pragmatic world view, a litany of extraordinary violence and cruelty over decades is laid bare, all in the name of civilisation: “The futile tone of it wearied her more than anything. It tasted of the stale breath of men for whom opinions trumped life.”
The world of Big Brother and the Party is boldly reimagined, as impressively rendered as the original but with a feminist slant. There is the constant surveillance of the telescreens, Newspeak, Doublethink, black markets, the Thought Police, the hugely disturbing children’s organisation, the Spies. The old Orwellian staples of rumour, division, mistrust, betrayal and hate reign supreme. Fans of Room 101 will not be disappointed. The torture scenes are turn-your-head-away brutal. If you ever wondered what happened to Julia after Winston’s famous cry of betrayal in 1984, look no further. In short, rats revisited.
Elsewhere, the feminist overtones bring about new backdrops: dormitories, washrooms, changing areas. Through Julia and her friends, Newman exposes the Party’s mistreatment of women, the Anti-Sex belts and artsem programmes, which are really just a way to control female reproductive rights: “It was also how unmarried girls covered up for sexcrime when they got pregnant.”
As with 1984, the book is loaded with awful ironies, such as a puritan regime that spies on its female citizens 24/7: “The locker rooms had telescreens on all four walls, angled down from the tops of the lockers, and it was impossible to change out of sight.” Women who give birth and raised 10 children to conscription age are awarded the Badge of the Hero Mother, a small consolation for all that loss.
While adult Julia is a fully fledged Party worker, a childhood spent in the Semi Autonomous Zone outside London means she has a point of reference, of contrast, to the oppressive present. These past segments are divulged in bright, tragic bursts that show the descent from revolution to totalitarian regime. Julia’s mother Clara was one such rebel. Their relationship is fleetingly but movingly depicted — the strife, the rage, the gestures of utter grace.
Other female characters are afforded similarly memorable cameos: a delightfully unrepentant Inner Party woman en route to be tortured, a young nurse who has a forced abortion, Winston Smith’s maligned wife: “[She] conformed to the rule of all ex-wives: she was handsome, but a mental and moral nullity.” Newman succeeds in giving voice to all these women, but her chief success is undoubtedly her reimagining of Julia herself, no longer just a pawn, a woman betrayed, now a fully realised force to be reckoned with, a woman living by her wits in a treacherously choppy world, hoping to stay afloat.
