📚 Finished reading Julia by Sandra Newman.

This is a retelling of George Orwell’s extremely famous book 1984, but from the perspective of one of the main female characters of the original Julia. She’s works as mechanic in the Ministry of Truth, finding one way or another to get by under the outstandingly horrendous regime. She navigates the system pragmatically if cynically, at least until such time as she becomes seemingly somewhat infatuated with the original’s rebellious protagonist, Winston Smith.

Readers of the original will know many of the events that this precipitates - but the shift in perspective that comes from foregrounding of a woman, elucidating the distinctly segmented gendered experience of the totalitarian regime concerned, makes it a compelling read.