It’s 1938, and George Bowling is a middle-aged insurance salesman. The son of a struggling seed merchant, he has risen to life in a London suburb, where he lives with his wife and kids on a typical middle-class street. But when he arrives home, George finds his cover has been blown, and Hilda knows he was not on a work trip. She is convinced her husband has been off with a woman somewhere, having an affair. George feels caught in an impossible situation. Should he go along with this fiction, or should he come clean and say that he had been on a journey into his past—in which case he would also have to tell her about gambling on the horses, winning, and then squandering the cash? We never know. Throughout the adventure, he receives reminders of impending war, and the threat of bombs becomes real when one lands accidentally on the town. After ruminating about his life, and where he has ended up, George decides he deserves a holiday, to spend his seventeen quid he won on a horse, and has managed to keep secret from Hilda. On a whim decides to return to Lower Binfield, and catch those carp which he had somehow never got around to catching as a child.

George Bowling is a fat, married, middle-aged (45 years old) insurance salesman, with 'two kids and a house in the suburbs'. George Bowling, the middle-aged, middle-income protagonist is a great vehicle for Orwell's musings on pre-WW2 England. Bowling is an insightful, straight talking Everyman character who conveys his thoughts with great honesty and self-deprecating humour. Duecentonovanta pagine a fianco di George (omonimo dell’autore) Bowling, un quarantacinquenne pingue, tristemente sposato, che inizia a ricordare il giorno in cui si reca a Londra per ritirare la propria dentiera. Ricorda i primi anni del secolo, quando era un adolescente a Lower Binfield e arriva alla conclusione che niente come la pesca è stato importante nella sua vita. La pesca identifica la sua giovinezza, quello stagno pieno di sogni enormi dove sarebbe bastato far calare un amo, avere una canna e una lenza per tirarli su.Somehow the reality never lives up to the memory. Places from childhood are always smaller and shabbier than imagined. You wonder just why you got on with those folks so well, as you are now all stumbling to find something to say. The holiday destination you dreamed of years ago looks nothing like the pictures in your mind. Yet you still feel a strange kind of ownership over somewhere that used to mean a lot to you, and a sense of loss. Something has drifted away without you noticing.

A bit of a negative attitude, sure, but he’s comfortable in this life, except that war is coming--just a few years off according to predictions. He was in the last war, and knows the changes war will bring. All this sets him to remembering his childhood, and giving us a picture of life in the early 1900’s, before the first war changed everything. Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. The end of the book is pretty downbeat and this tone characterises the whole book and therefore might not be to everyone's taste. I loved it. I've already bought Orwell's ' Keep the Aspidistra Flying' which I will read soon. If you like any of the books I list at the start of this review then I'm confident you'd enjoy this book too. George che nella prima parte ricordava, nella seconda ritorna dove è cresciuto. Se mi venisse chiesto di declinare il mio concetto di “tristezza” credo che mi avvarrei delle sue paroleVery funny, as well as invigoratingly realistic ... Nineteen Eighty-Four is here in embryo. So is Animal Farm ... not many novels carry the seeds of two classics as well as being richly readable themselves' Orwell sen ne muhteşem bir yazarsın! Kitabın daha ilk sayfalarında bu cümleyi kurduyor Orwell, en ünlü eserleri 1984 ve Hayvan Çiftliği olsa da (ki onları çok severim), geri planda kalan eserleri de onlar kadar iyiymiş bu kitapla bunu daha iyi anladım. Kitabı okudukça sevdim, sevdikçe okudum.