Coming Up for Air

Middle-aged insurance salesman George "Tubby" Bowling is dutifully paying the mortgage on an average English suburban row house, and supporting an ungrateful family. As the years roll by, he comes to feel like a hostage to his wife and children—until he wins some money at the races, and sets out for the village where he grew up. Hoping to meet old friends and fish for carp in a pool he remembers from 30 years before, Bowling may find out that you can't go home again. A comic lament for traditional England, George Orwell's 1939 novel also anticipates the changes that the war will bring.