Everyone calls it political. It's a horror novel.

You get told your whole life that this is a book about politics and then you reach the part with the cage and realise you've been lied to. It's horror. It's horror with a filing system and a canteen.

The bit that got me isn't even the torture, it's the language stuff. Newspeak. A man at a desk cheerfully explaining that they're shrinking the dictionary on purpose, that by 2050 nobody will have the words left to think anything awkward with, and being PLEASED about it, like he's telling you about his allotment. I had to put the book face down and go and look at the damp patch in the hallway for a bit, which is my version of a grounding exercise.

Winston is a bit of a wet lettuce, by the way, and Julia is doing all of the actual rebelling. She's the one nicking chocolate and real coffee and organising the room over the shop. He mostly writes in a diary and worries about his varicose ulcer.

Not a ten because the long chunk of the book-within-the-book made my eyes slide straight off the page, and I skimmed it, and then I went back and skimmed it again on purpose to check I hadn't missed something. I hadn't. Sorry to everyone.

Anyway. Slept with the lamp on after the rats, and Dec thought that was hilarious for about four days.