Orwell's whimsy, I guess this book is seen as.
A rare piece, rarely read and never given up as discussion in English classes, which is a pity.
The messages it contains are far more subtle than either Animal Farm or 1984, but many of them are the same.
Coming up for Air stands as a marvellous testament to the class Orwell never belonged to - the middle. Orwell's life was around the fringes of society and I'd be surprised if he ever really got to know a George Bowling in his own life, yet we know from familiar experience that George is as real as any of Dickens' characters. (I always wonder whether Orwell naming his main character after himself was a bit of a cry for never having experienced the life of a nine-to-fiver in the suburbs himself.)
George Bowling is a happy-go-lucky life insurance salesman with a nice semi-detached in the suburbs; wife, two kids and a steady job at the Flying Salamander insurance company. George, who on his better days, can pass for a stockbroker or bookie, is having a typical lost-youth mid-life crisis. Instead of looking to recapture his youth with fast cars and women, George seeks the solace of catching fish - a dream he's harboured since childhood.
Alas, the world has well and truly turned in the intervening years and his search is meaningless in the face of "progress". "Progress" being more industry, more houses, more roads, and of course, more loony-bins.
George's reflections on his youth, his army days and suburban life are a glimpse of a long-past, more innocent, England, when ten quid could buy a weekend away in comparative luxury.
If you manage to find a copy, sit down and give yourself a treat!