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the complete review - biography

The Girl from the
Fiction Department

by
Hilary Spurling

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : sketchy and defensive Sonia Orwell portrait

See our review for fuller assessment.

  Review Consensus:

  No consensus, though some very enthusiastic

  From the Reviews:

• "Spurling's desire to salvage her friend's reputation also lends a breathless, frenetic, and at times sloppy quality to her prose (.....) Far too ardent, this is nevertheless a needed corrective to the beating Sonia has taken from many of Orwell's biographers." - Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic Monthly
  
  
• "All this Hilary Spurling tells with a certain affectionate reticence - rather too much reticence, perhaps - both marriages are whisked over at a pace too brisk to allow for much of the thoughtful analysis that is otherwise her trademark as a biographer. The portrait of Sonia that emerges is an enigma, rather than, strictly speaking, a rehabilitation." - Jane Shilling, Evening Standard
  
  
• "Spurling's memoir not only exonerates "the widow Orwell" from corruption but brings her back in all her tragicomic contradictions." - Richard Shone, The Guardian
  
  
• "It is a generous effort even if it fails to persuade us that the last dreadful years were all somebody else's fault." - John Leonard, Harper's
  
  
• "Sonia was a complex, strange character; but Spurling's polemic defence is too often OTT, and relies too much on her memory of Sonia's selective memory. I remember how variable it was." - Bernard Crick, The Independent
  
  
• "It's a kindness to want to rectify the denigration of friends who cannot defend themselves. Spurling's memoir is plainly that, and good-hearted. As to the truth, who knows ? Perhaps it is the best kind of biography." - Jenny Diski, London Review of Books
  
  
• "Emphasizing Sonia's fragility, Spurling's openly partisan account too often shades into maudlin excess, reductive psychologizing and overdone description." - Matthew Price, The Los Angeles Times
  
  
• "In this wonderful book, Hilary Spurling pulls off something remarkable. She succeeds in showing that biography, to be gripping, does not always need to be on the lookout for flaws and dirty secrets. Instead, it can be celebratory and restorative, a force for good." - Kathryn Hughes, New Statesman
  
  
• "To the table she brings great sensitivity, exemplary research, and an agenda, about which she is perfectly clear. (...) At various junctures, the reader may wish that she would stop arguing with umpires and just hit the ball. Or that she would fill in some conspicuous blanks." - Stacy Schiff, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "The Girl from the Fiction Department is a compelling and often touching account of a wretchedly unhappy life; and although Sonia Orwell must have been maddening at times -- not least when she broke into French while discussing elevated or artistic matters -- it's hard not to feel that she has been roughly treated." - Jeremy Lewis, The Observer
  
  
• "Her book, then, is a labour of love. But there is nothing sloppy or soppy or partial about it: this is a fine portrait of a woman who counted among her devoted friends some of the best writers and painters of the 20th century. (...) She has unearthed a lot of material about her subject’s early life, and the book is strong on period flavour. (...) It’s an excellent read too; a worthy addition to the author’s distinguished backlist." - Cressida Connolly, The Spectator
  
  
• "Interviews with friends of the Orwell circle, and a study of Sonia's disastrously mismanaged financial affairs, make a persuasive case for the defence. It is not all sweetness and light: Sonia's heavy drinking and her explosive temper are not glossed over. She emerges, however, as an intelligent, generous woman whose marriage of convenience to the dying Orwell was consistent with her lifelong idealisation of creativity. (...) In this reworking of the Orwell story, there are neither saints nor monsters, and an unlikely marriage is seen in context." - Brenda Niall, Sydney Morning Herald
  
  
• "Spurling's is not simply a partial chronicle; it is a story told in a sustained pathetic register which does not admit scepticism or doubt. (...) The Girl from the Fiction Department is an admirable act of friendship and an interesting lesson in biography (with a moral: don't have anything to do with writers), but it fails to rehabilitate Sonia Orwell completely, largely because it is so partisan." - Lindsay Duguid, Times Literary Supplement
  
  
• "Still, she led quite a life, and Spurling, who knew her during its last decade, recounts it briskly, stylishly, with real affection and warmth." - Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Hilary Spurling tackles Sonia Orwell as much as a friend as a biographer, and with the express intent of (as she sees it) clearing up the record -- trying to disentangle truth from the "myth of the cold and grasping Widow Orwell, based on ignorance, misconception and distortion".
       The richly illustrated book offers a whirlwind tour of Sonia Orwell's whirlwind life, from her birth in India, the difficult family life (dad died when she was an infant, step-dad became a failure), her hated Sacred Heart school-years, her part at Horizon, the men in her life (she got around), her French adventures, and so on.
       George Orwell is, surprisingly, not that much of a presence. Though taken by her -- Sonia was the model for 1984's Julia, that 'girl from the Fiction Department' that also gives this book its title -- he didn't appear to be the most important man in her life even when he was alive. She'd babysit, and: "The two got on well enough for Sonia to sleep with Orwell, more for his sake than hers", but after World War II she was more involved with Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
       Eventually, George and Sonia did decide to marry -- but by that time George was deathly ill. Spurling reports that Sonia admitted:

'He said he would get better if I married him,' she told me twenty years later, 'so, you see, I had no choice.'

In 1972, when Stansky and Abrahams published the first volume of their life of Orwell, Sonia felt they had left her no option save to appoint an official biographer.

Her choice of the political economist Bernard Crick was an impulsive decision which, like many of her defiant gestures, she later came to regret.

In just over twenty years since she dies, Sonia's reputation has been systematically blackened. Orwell's subsequent biographers have taken their tone from Crick, who saw her as greedy and unscrupulous.

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Links:

• Penguin publicity page

• The Atlantic Monthly
• Evening Standard
• The Guardian
• The Guardian (scroll down for review)
• The Los Angeles Times
• The Observer
• Sydney Morning Herald
• The Washington Times

• Hilary Spurling at British Council Literature
• Hilary Spurling at DHA

• Diana Athill's publishing memoir, Stet

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About the Author:

       Hilary Spurling has written several biographies.

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© 2003-2022 the complete review

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