Andrew Ervin. (2015). Burning Down George Orwell's House: A Novel. Soho Press.

Andrew Ervin. 2015. Burning Down George Orwell's House: A Novel. Soho Press.

Andrew Ervin, Burning Down George Orwell's House: A Novel. Soho Press, 2015.

Andrew Ervin. Burning Down George Orwell's House: A Novel. Soho Press, 2015.

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34. • value: single malt
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creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Ervin, Andrew
   • bioText: Andrew Ervin grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and has lived in Budapest, Illinois, and Louisiana. He has a degree in philosophy and religion from Goucher College and completed his MFA in fiction at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His writing regularly appears in the New York Times Book Review, USA Today, the Washington Post, the Believer, Salon, and elsewhere. He currently lives in Philadelphia with his flutist wife, Elivi Varga. He is the author of Extraordinary Renditions, a collection of novellas. Burning Down George Orwell's House is his first novel.
   • name: Andrew Ervin

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2015-05-05T00:00:00-04:00

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Burning Down George Orwell's House

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A darkly comic novel about advertising, truth, single malt, Scottish hospitality—or lack thereof—and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
 
Ray Welter, who was until recently a high-flying advertising executive in Chicago, has left the world of newspeak behind. He decamps to the isolated Scottish Isle of Jura in order to spend a few months in the cottage where George Orwell wrote most of his seminal novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ray is miserable, and quite prepared to make his troubles go away with the help of copious quantities of excellent scotch.
 
But a few of the islanders take a decidedly shallow view of a foreigner coming to visit in order to sort himself out, and Ray quickly finds himself having to deal with not only his own issues but also a community whose eccentricities are at times amusing and at others downright dangerous. Also, the locals believe—or claim to believe—that there’s a werewolf about, and against his better judgment, Ray’s misadventures build to the night of a traditional, boozy werewolf hunt on the Isle of Jura on the summer solstice.
 
 

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Robert Stone, author of Dog Soldiers
   • content:

     Praise for Burning Down George Orwell's House

     "Burning Down George Orwell's House is really most enjoyable, a witty, original turn on the life and memory of the Sage of Jura, taking place on the island where he wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. Eric Blair serves as the McGuffin in this story, which is one part black comedy and one part a meditation on modern life. It is well written and truly original."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
   • content: "As all good comedies do, Ervin's novel contains a sober question at its core--in this case, whether the idea of "escape" itself is just another manipulation sold to us "proles" by the very same wired world that engulfs and exhausts us. Take a wild guess what George Orwell would say."
3. • premium: False
   • source: The New York Times Book Review
   • content: "Burning Down George Orwell's House is a sweet book full of delights. Since many of its best passages are rhapsodies on single malt whiskies, one is tempted to call it a wee bonny dram of a tale."
4. • premium: False
   • source: New York Post
   • content: "A whisky-soaked hoot worth hollering about."--The Austin Chronicle

     "Big Brother might not be watching [Ray Welter] but the island's eccentric locals sure are and also, possibly, a werewolf. High comedy ensues as Welter tries to find himself, Orwell and the savage beast."

5. • premium: False
   • source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
   • content: "A glorious debut."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Paste Magazine
   • content: "Wry and engaging... Nineteen Eighty-Four casts a long shadow over countless books--but not this one... Ervin has achieved something uniquely refreshing: a book that shows the taste and restraint to pay knowing, affectionate and humorous tribute to George Orwell without trying to prove him right--or to create some redundant simulacrum of his work."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Newsday
   • content: "A breezy bit of fun for anyone who dreams of Scotland, enjoys a wee dram of scotch and wonders what it might be like to leave modern life behind--at least for a few hours." --The Cleveland Plain Dealer
     "Follows in the tradition of classic comedies where a supposedly cosmopolitan outsider tests his welcome in an insular old-world village. Both come in for some good-natured satire."
8. • premium: False
   • source: Bookreporter.com
   • content: "Besides the sheer entertainment that Burning Down George Orwell's House provides, its value comes in its power to make readers stop and take a close look at their own priorities."
9. • premium: False
   • source: Rain Taxi
   • content: "Raises genuine questions about ambition, change, and freedom. The novel never offers Ray or the reader simplistic answers to life's questions, and it tempers Ray's misery with comic moments. By the end, although Ray finds it impossible to be truly off the grid, he does find his way back to himself. Readers will enjoy going with him on that journey."
10. • premium: False
    • source: Black Sheep Dances
    • content: "You will get thirsty, and if you can muster up a fire in a fireplace, you'll be set."
11. • premium: False
    • source: The Santa Fe Writer's Project Quarterly
    • content: "Burning Down will appeal to those who have wondered what ditching our smart phones and laptops would do to make our lives less complicated. What geographically remote island could we retreat to for some peace of mind and, obviously, some world-class scotch?"
12. • premium: False
    • source: Kirkus Reviews
    • content: "A dramatic, thoughtful, and at times comic revisiting of (and attempt to escape from) Orwell's world."
13. • premium: False
    • source: Booklist
    • content: "Captures the stark and chill atmosphere of the small island, on which strangers are unwelcome and apparently very good whiskey is consumed in copious quantities."
14. • premium: False
    • source: Library Journal
    • content: "Ervin writes with skill and a penchant for the absurd... Very funny."
15. • premium: False
    • source: Publishers Weekly
    • content: "Ervin excels at atmosphere and fish-out-of-water interactions."
16. • premium: False
    • source: Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls' Rising

    • content: "Burning Down George Orwell's House is fiction as high-wire act, and Ray Welter is a nowhere man for the ages, going down and out in the shadow of the man himself. Ervin tosses up hilarity and horror, musicality and menace, with page after page of firecracker prose."--Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

      "Burning Down George Orwell's House is a wickedly funny novel soaked in wit and whisky as well as a poetic revelation on consumer living. Ervin ingeniously draws you into the disturbing world of Jura and its menacing inhabitants. I loved it."--Lisa O'Donnell, author of The Death of Bees

      "Ray Welter--corrup

17. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 2, 2015
      Ray Welter has had enough—enough of his job in advertising (main by-products: more SUVs sold, more harm to the climate, more money, more damage to Ray’s soul), of Chicago and his failing marriage, of grieving for his father. What he hasn’t had enough of is scotch or George Orwell, whose testimony to the power of language, 1984, is partly why Ray ended up writing ads. The two intersect on the isolated Scottish Island of Jura, where Ray rents the house Orwell once stayed in. Jura’s no idyll: it rains constantly, dead animals keep turning up on Ray’s doorstep, and there’s talk of a werewolf. The few locals are strange, hostile, and possibly violent, but the scotch is astonishingly good. The best thing on the island (and in the book) is 17-year-old Molly, who wants off Jura and away from her angry, xenophobic father, but her stay with Ray ends up being a useful time out rather than a real life change—rather like Ray’s entire sojourn in Scotland. Ervin excels at atmosphere and fish-out-of-water interactions.

18. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 1, 2015
      Advertising, single-malt whisky, and a remote Scottish island feature prominently in this novel about a man paying homage to his love for Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ray Welter, a burned-out advertising executive with a failed marriage, decides to radically alter his life by going to Jura, an island in the Inner Hebrides, and renting Barnhill, the very house where Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ray has been obsessed by the novel since college, and in flashbacks to his career as an adman, both he and the reader see the irony of his life-he's become a slave to Big Brother (in the guise of corporate America), using Newspeak to sell products that he doesn't believe in. On the island he finds an assortment of eccentrics-one of whom believes himself to be a werewolf-and at least one almost-certifiable sociopath, Gavin Pitcairn, whose 17-year-old daughter, Molly, desperately wants to leave Jura and go to art school. As one might expect, Ray finds Barnhill much different from the romanticized mental image he'd created, and those older islanders who remember Eric Blair (George Orwell's real name) have not-so-fond memories of him. The house had been abandoned for a good while, and it's in such a state of disrepair that it's almost unlivable, but Ray takes comfort in the abundant local Scotch whisky and in rereading his beloved first edition of the novel. When Molly takes refuge with Ray at Barnhill to escape her abusive father, she acts provocatively, though no romance develops. Still, Gavin assumes the worst, making Ray's hold on life much more tenuous than it had been. A dramatic, thoughtful, and at times comic revisiting of (and attempt to escape from) Orwell's world.

19. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 1, 2015
      

      In his latest advertising campaign, Ray Welter uses his favorite Orwellian "newspeak" to make driving a gas-guzzling SUV appear to be a public service to America. That success, coupled with an impending divorce, makes Welter question his life and its meaning. Hoping to drop off the grid and remake himself, he sells everything he owns and retreats to Scotland's Isle of Jura, where he rents the house George Orwell lived in when he wrote 1984. Unfortunately, the residents of Jura don't actually take to strangers, despite their reputation for hospitality. As he unwinds this tale, Ervin (Extraordinary Renditions) writes with skill and a penchant for the absurd. Welter is everyman, caught up in a life he can't escape, searching for a way to come to terms with himself. The host of eccentric and sometimes sociopathic characters that surround him give this book the quality of a bad but very funny dream. VERDICT A black comedy that readers of general fiction and philosophers will enjoy.--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

20. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      April 1, 2015
      American advertising man Ray Welter arrives on the Inner Hebrides island of Jura, where George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four, and somehow rents the very house in which that iconic novel was written. Ervin, author of Extraordinary Renditions (2010), captures the stark and chill atmosphere of the small island, on which strangers are unwelcome and apparently very good whiskey is consumed in copious quantities. Ray is absolutely gone on Orwell and believes Nineteen Eighty-Four the greatest English novel; it was reading Orwell that determined his career in advertising. Ervin alternates long chapters fraught with horror (guns, animal carcasses on his doorstep, possibly a werewolf) on the islandwhere Ray's nemesis, Gavin Pitcairn, still has it in for Orwell (known there by his real name of Eric Blair) and where Pitcairn's, yes, beautiful and artistic teenage daughter, Molly, befriends (and thus jeopardizes) Raywith satiric, often funny, even Orwellian chapters of Ray's marketing career, where his greatest success was to promote oil-guzzling SUVs to the anti-ecological market. Not everyone's cup of tea, perhaps, but a delight for Orwell fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

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A darkly comic novel about advertising, truth, single malt, Scottish hospitality—or lack thereof—and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
 
Ray Welter, who was until recently a high-flying advertising executive in Chicago, has left the world of newspeak behind. He decamps to the isolated Scottish Isle of Jura in order to spend a few months in the cottage where George Orwell wrote most of his seminal novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ray is miserable, and quite prepared to make his troubles go away with the help of copious quantities of excellent scotch.
 
But a few of the islanders take a decidedly shallow view of a foreigner coming to visit in order to sort himself out, and Ray quickly finds himself having to deal with not only his own issues but also a community whose eccentricities are at times amusing and at others downright dangerous. Also, the locals believe—or claim to believe—that...

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