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Rating: 4 Stars
Read: December 2016

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. It tells the story of a middle-classed man who is stressed by the control that money has over society. He rejects the middle-class lifestyle, chooses to quit his comfortable job and begins to live a life of poverty working in a bookshop and writing poetry. He blames money for all the misfortunes he encounters during the course of the book. The aspidistra plant symbolizes the middle class.

I found this book very relatable on a lot of levels, despite its age. Overall, an enjoyable, quick read.

Reason read: TBR takedown for June 2025.
This is not my favorite of my Orwell reads but then again, he created a character I absolutely could not stand. Gordon Comstock is a man who quits a good job to protest capitalism and "the love of money". He is a wanna be writer, dabbling at writing poetry. It's all fine and good to have principals but he takes advantages of others who work for their money when he decides to live below what can sustain him. But I disliked him for more than that. He is a man who cannot handle is booze. He is a man who needles his girlfriend into having unprotected sex "if she loves him". Cheats on her with other women. And most of all he cannot even handle money in a respectable manner. The title is the most interesting part of this book. An Aspidistra is a plant that can be grown in most conditions even with hardly any light. In fact it doesn't like too much light. Kind of like our Gordon Comstock. The Aspidistra is a symbal of the middle class in Victorian times. The title is supposedly "hooray for the middle class".

The novel explores themes of poverty, materialism, and the search for authenticity in a world dominated by consumerism. I think this was a rather stupid novel all in all. Gordon self imposes poverty. He wants as much as the next guy, makes a show of denying himself but in the end he really isn't denying himself. There is nothing authentic about Gordon until he quits fooling himself.