"Julia" by Sandra Newman

An audio book, set in the world of "1984".

Julia, 26, works in the Fiction section of the Ministry of Truth, mending the machines that create plots. She wears an "anti-sex league" sash. Artificial insemination (ArtSem) is encouraged. She chats up Winston Smith. The Ministry of Love is white with no windows.

She finds an aborted foetus in the toilet of her hostel and reports it. It was Vicky's but someone else is blamed and is never seen again. Vicky fancies Julia. Lesbians are biologically unable to have sex, so it's not a sex crime. Julia fantasised about pilots. She's had sex with about 20 party members. She likes sex in the countryside. O'Brien has a private meeting with her. He's impressed that she denounced her mother. O'Brien says that Julia doesn't hate, that she (like him) is one of the new breed of humans. He knows that she's had sex with Smith and wants her to continue using him as her training subject. Winston thinks that O'Brien's in their side.

There's a long flashback to her youth.

She uses a grubby room in a junkstore to have sex with Winston and others. She knows that it's bugged and has cameras. She's fantasised about having sex with Big Brother in his crystal palace (he has nothing to hide - everybody else is under constant surveillance). When she thinks she's pregnant she gets inseminated as part of the "Big Future" project - it's Big Brother's semen.

Vicky is on the Central Committee. Julia tells her that she wonders if the "Brotherhood" (rebels) are really much of a threat, and whether there really is a war against Eurasia. She and Winston are arrested. They're tortured in the Ministry of Love by O'Brien, ultimately betraying each other. She's released though she's disfigured by rats eating her face, and expecting to be killed once she's given birth. She meets Winston, who feels guilty.

She escapes the city by merging with evacuees. She by chance approaches crystal palace. The rebels have taken it over. They welcome her. She's surprised that Big Brother exists. She's allowed to visit him. He's old and demented. She (like many other of his visitors) feels sorry for him and her own lost hopes. At the end, while she's processed to join the rebels she's asked the same questions as O'Brien asked Winston.

I can recall few details from "1984", so I looked it up on Wikipedia. It entered the public domain on 1 January 2021 in most of the world. I didn't realise that the statement "2 + 2 = 5" was a communist party slogan which encouraged fulfilment of the five-year plan in four years. I presume the conversation between Julia and Winston in "1984" closely matches that in "Julia", though here we get Julia's PoV, and there's more about sex. I'd forgotten that the anti-sex idea was in 1984.

Other reviews

• Natasha Walter (by about halfway through, I began to feel more convinced by Julia’s responses to this totalitarian state than I had ever been by Smith’s. Yet after that halfway point, the novel starts to weaken. The entry into darkness, into the Ministry of Love, does not have the power of Orwell’s journey. ... The book reaches what feels like an effective and sharply delineated denouement just over 50 pages before the end.)