Book Review: "Julia" by Sandra Newman

I have been waiting to read this for a long, long while. Basically since it came out. Julia is the story of the character 'Julia' from George Orwell's 1984. It starts with Julia working in fiction and we get to experience all the familiarities from the novel's origin story. I have always been interested in books like this. Books like what Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, and what Foe by JM Coetzee is to Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Again Julia by Sandra Newman is a retelling of 1984, something that should be very interesting to you at this particular moment in our cultural timeline.

George Orwell classically missed out on giving us the arc of the one important female character in the novel. She doesn't get a proper ending, she doesn't even get a backstory. She simply turns up and then fades out. What Sandra Newman does is not just fill in the gaps, she gives us a whole new perspective on the world of 1984 and what it means for women. Julia, in survival mode, often uses her femininity to mask any subversive activities - showing that not only does she know what she's doing but she's probably much smarter than a lot of the other people around her. Sandra Newman's world may not be as dark as the one from Orwell's original novel, but it is far more character-centric when it comes to how Julia interacts with her world.

She works in the Fiction Department revising novels, where she learns the mechanisms of propaganda from the inside. Outwardly she appears a model Party citizen; inwardly she is calculating, sexually autonomous, and deeply aware of how to manipulate the gaze of the regime. This definitely goes against the naive and often submissive way Winston originally perceived her in the original text. Even before she and Winston meet, she is quite a philosophical and crafty character, winding her own way around the different ideas presented by the Party. Even when the Hate begins, she witnesses Emmanuel Goldstein on the screen and ponders on what he truly stands for, rather than simply submitting. Though she knows also how to perfectly blend in as to not arouse suspicion.

Her relationship with Winston begins very differently from the way Winston himself narrates it in Orwell’s version: she approaches him out of curiosity, desire, and political calculation. Julia sees Winston not as a soulmate but as a fragile, soulful, slightly ridiculous man who needs guidance. Their affair becomes a space for tenderness and humour but also for sharply diverging political worldviews. Where Winston romanticises the past, Julia focuses on the immediate realities of oppression. This definitely makes Julia look a little smarter than Winston is. The past cannot be brought back and changed, but the future can be if they were to work hard enough. Sandra Newman's writing of Julia is admirable but sometimes, it lacks the philosophical intensity of 1984. Though, I wonder whether that is done on purpose to make Winston look even more ignorant than he was portrayed in Orwell's novel.

Julia’s view of the Party is more sophisticated than Winston’s. For example: she recognises that the regime thrives not only on fear but on such things like: boredom, misogyny, class contempt, and the grinding down of joy. Her critique is social and systemic rather than nostalgic. The novel highlights how the erasure of women’s experiences in totalitarian narratives is itself a political act and Julia’s voice restores that missing dimension. In one case, there is a view of alone-time which is ridiculed by the Party. It is the suggestion that not doing something to better the outcomes of the Party's mission is basically a complete waste of time - including things you do for you own benefit. It definitely looks like the current world is swinging that way, but I am going to ignore my own social criticism for now.

The famous events leading to Julia and Winston’s arrest unfold from Julia’s perspective, revealing her awareness of dangers Winston never perceived in his want to remain nostalgic. Her suspicion of O’Brien, her understanding of surveillance patterns, and her attempts to protect Winston show how often she was the one preventing disaster. This reframes the tragedy: Winston believed himself the leader of their rebellion, but it was Julia who understood how resistance actually worked. This definitely makes us understand why Orwell would have left Julia out entirely following Winston's arrest - it was probably because she was much smarter and more aware than he was of what was coming. Even though they were in a relationship, they were looking at the opposite sides: Winston to the past, Julia to the future.

The ending is strong and powerful, and though I'm not going to tell you what happens, I am going to leave you with this: there is something really terrible that happens.

Sandra Newman's book has really completed the landscape of the original for me and though sometimes it didn't feel as dark and bleak as the original, I still thought it was a wonderful exercise in bringing to life a marginalised character. If anyone wants to write a book on my favourite character from the original: Emmanuel Goldstein, then I will happily read it. The world of 1984 awaits all of us. That is great for literature, but terrifying for the state of the world.