An insurance salesman desperately tries to recapture his youth in this โcharmingโ comic novel by the iconic British author (The New York Times).
George Bowling is having a crisis. Not a loud, unsightly one, but a small, desperate one. His days are occupied by an unfulfilling insurance job; his nights spent worrying about his mortgage, marriage, expanding waistline, and what seems to be a certain prospect of World War II looming on the horizon. So when George unexpectedly hits it big on a lucky horse, he spends the windfall on the only thing he ever knew to make him happy: his childhood.
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George travels back to his boyhood home of Lower Binfield, swimming in vivid memories of worry-free bliss, sights, sounds, smells, and emotions of a pre-war world. But while the idyllic village in Georgeโs head may not have seen battle, the reality may be more sobering than he is prepared to deal with.
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Penned with Orwellโs trademark insight and passion, Coming Up for Air is an elegiac look at memory and desire at a desperate moment in Englandโs history.