Park your free will at the door and set your watches to 13 o’clock, because it’s time to return to the dystopian world of 1984. In The Sisterhood, novelist Katherine Bradley brings us a feminist retelling of Orwell’s beloved story, this time written from Julia’s perspective.
The book delves deep into its protagonist’s untapped backstory, granting her a complex, highly toxic family life and a burning desire to bring down Big Brother. To do this she’ll need the help of a band of resourceful, determined women: the eponymous Sisterhood. In fleshing out her character, Bradley succeeds in making Julia a fully-formed, engaging narrator, but loses some of the claustrophobic hopelessness that made the source material so striking. Fans of the original may also be surprised by the demotion of Winston Smith from a righteous, everyman hero to a woefully ignorant, maliciously-minded pawn in Julia’s ever-more deadly game.
As a standalone thriller, it’s a tense and thought-provoking read, but as a companion piece to 1984 it’s hard not to view it as a rather weak retcon of a modern classic. If The Sisterhood ever appeared on the televised version of Big Brother, you’d worry it was destined for an early eviction.
The Sisterhood, Katherine Bradley (Simon & Schuster)
Price: £16.99/£8.99 Ebook/£14.99 audiobook. Info: here
words RACHEL REES
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