Keep the Aspidistra Flying Audiobook By George Orwell cover art

Keep the Aspidistra Flying

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Keep the Aspidistra Flying

By: George Orwell
Narrated by: Richard Brown
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Gordon Comstock is a poor young man who works by day in a grubby London bookstore and spends his evenings shivering in a rented room, trying to write. Gordon has published a slim volume of verse and is determined to keep free of the “money world” of safe, lucrative jobs, marriage, and family responsibilities. This world, to Gordon, spells the end of art and aspidistra, the homely, indestructible house plant that stands in every middle-class British window.

Gordon’s sweetheart, Rosemary, understands him: she is patient with his pride and lack of funds. But then, as it happens with all lovers, events overtake them.

Orwell’s picture of the “money world”, as Gordon sees it, is in his best satirical vein.

©1956 The Estate of Sonia B. Orwell (P)1992 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Political Witty

Critic reviews

"Gritty, growling, commonsensical and touching. [Orwell] never wrote a basically kinder or more human novel." ( Time)
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I really did enjoy the story. good character development. I also really enjoyed this narrator.

very enjoyable

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Oh, what an ode to the money-gods and aspidistras. An amazing, emotional journey of one man's fight against aspidistras and the inevitable pull of the money-gods. This is a novel that is warm, hard, depressing, funny, absurd and at the end virtuous and redeeming. Orwell is able to simultaneously thread the needles of commerce, class, art and protest. Orwell weaves his story with satire and pathos, but doesn't make caricatures of ANY of his characters. Love Richard Brown's laid back narration.

Vicisti, O aspidistra!

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I needed to write this review because Richard Brown's reading of this novel truly made me fall in love with audiobooks way back in the 1990s. I finally found it here again.

Yes, the audio is a bit out of date, but please hear me out: his voice captures the tone of this novel perfectly. I listened to this once with my family and we could not stop laughing, or simply marveling at the witty observations of interwar Britain.

This is also a novel about life in a bookshop. The satire about literary life (and I speak from experience, as someone who also worked in a new generation of bookshops: Barnes & Noble) is just too funny, even as we love literature. So I strongly recommend this novel. You'll encounter another side of Orwell. And just remember its basic lesson: money, money - always money.

this dry satire will have you in tears laughing

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What didn’t you like about Richard Brown’s performance?

Brown's voice is shrill and monotonous. I would return it if I could and certainly I won't buy another book he has narrated.

Monotonous

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The audible version is not whispersynched to the Kindle book. An irritating defect. Not at all happy.

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