A Collection of Essays

One reviewer names the flaw outright, calling the collection “an uneven patchwork, with parts that do not match,” and plenty of readers say they hit a wall around the halfway point and started skipping to whichever title looked promising, “jumped to pieces whose titles seemed more appealing” is how one put the switch. The famous opener, Shooting an Elephant, doesn’t predict what follows: it earns its reputation while a cluster of British-culture pieces, Boys’ Weeklies among them, sit “stuck so firmly in time and place” that only a devoted Anglophile stays interested. Orwell also argues past his opponents rather than with them, so counter-evidence rarely dents his certainty. At forty essays across four decades, even an admirer allows it can be “a bit too much George Orwell in one serving.”