Layla's Reviews > 1984

~ 2 stars ~

TW/CW: talk of rape and homicide, physical and mental abuse / torture, misogyny

This has to be my most disappointing read of the year so far. Everything I expected, and everything I wanted never happened. I thought that the political aspect was interesting, and while I liked that part, it sadly was not enough to save this book.

I’ve been wanting to read this for a while as it’s considered such a staple in dystopian, and in general literature. I’ve even watched a school play which I enjoyed, but of course, that had excluded all the problematic aspects, so I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

This book takes on an authoritarianism and totalitarian government, propaganda, censorship, surveillance, etc. and I thought it dealt with that well enough, and making connections between current day and this book was an experience, i'll say that.

Having known this going in, it seemed like something I would love, and it checked off many boxes of what I was looking for at the time. I even had many quotes I had highlighted for this review that I thought were insightful, but my very smart self returned the ebook without recording them all. Other than the ones I used for my reading updates of course, but most of those were ones I used to complain.


But other than that aspect, it felt like a chore to read. So many things that I didn’t like, and so many things that angered me. I’m reading a story, I want to be immersed, and invested, not bored out of my mind. The writing was nothing special, and the story itself was blander than white bread.

The info dumps were absolutely painful too. I don’t know how I pushed through, though barely considering it took me almost 20 days to complete. There was one particular infodump that I especially suffered through, one that would serve to bring up some of these political discussions and simultaneously throw up a bunch of world building on me. It took up more than 13% of the entire book. 13 PERCENT. My brain felt all mushy by the end, and I’m not sure I properly processed any of it. What was the reason? It couldn’t have been any less digestible.


And then of course we have the characters. I would gladly fist fight Winston, who is our protagonist. I don’t care if some would consider that elder abuse, I would if I could. I have read from such unlikable characters before, but Winston is on another level of terrible. Again, must I ask, what was the reason? Why was he so absolutely horrible? He constantly sexualizes the women he “loves” in disgusting ways, and her youth, and has some weird grudge against anyone that is “pure”, whatever that means. No, sorry, he just hates women in general. Before knowing Julia, his love interest, he imagined raping her, and then slitting her throat for being, what he thought then, celabite. He contemplated smashing her head against the wall. And those weren’t solidary situations. He spends the entire book saying and thinking creepy, disgusting and irritating stuff. I hate him.

And then we have Julia, the only female character that spoke more than one line. And her only role is that she is shallow and weak, existing solely for Winston and his pleasure, and his sexual fantasies. And that is all she cares about. Sex. That is all she lives for, and nothing else. She has no thoughts of her own, and her personality is as annoying as can be. It definitely plays into the whole “women are objects” thing, which of course angered me even more. I mean for goodness sake, the misogyny was so strong with this one. As in the overused trope, which in itself promotes that internalized misogyny. Julia outright says how she hates women. Excuse you?


And all the other characters didn’t matter, at least to me, so that neither hurt or helped my experience, but the two we knew the most made me want to chuck the book out the window more times than I could count.

And Winston and Julia together was even worse than I could ever imagine. Not only do they not have any chemistry, just a lot of possessiveness, but they are already confessing their love never having properly talked before. Winston spends a good chunk of the book hating on her, but then when she confesses her love, suddenly he is in love with her too. Winston even tells Julia about how he wanted to *coughs* murder her, and she just laughs it off as if it is something normal. If only this behavior was condemned, as it should be.


This is the most unromantic relationship ever. And obviously I am aware that perhaps I should not judge the book by it’s characters, and their portrayal, as that is not what the story is truly about. That’s not what is important. But don’t you think that if I’m going to be following their story, that I should at least be able to tolerate them? At the very least. I don’t think I am being unerasable. And perhaps I could have overlooked the characters, had I actually been interested in the story itself, but I did not. Little by little, any hope I had was crushed, and I was bored to no extent, so having to deal with an incel on top of it all did not bode well for



Final Thoughts: Overall, I dragged through this. It was not a good read. This is so highly praised and I just expected better. I can see where people who like it are coming from in some way, but it was a big no for me. I’ve also been informed that this is basically just a rip off of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, which is a better book, so perhaps I will pick that up in the future. Maybe i’ll even read Animal Farm for the sake of it, and also because I’m curious to read about talking pigs.