Good read, interesting topic. The characters acted as I expected for the most part, with some too contrived coincidences.

I wanted to like this book more. I wanted to finish it - it is after all a mere 300 pages long.

But after one month I still can't find the will to pick this book up and finish it.

This has left me feeling quite distressed since I always make it a point to finish a book. I'm also rather disappointed because I didn't want to feel this way about the great George Orwell.

The book is beautifully written, with well rounded charachters, a fairly good plot, wonderful descriptions and some fairly good social commentary. It was probably quite provocative for its time. Yet there's something missing. I can't quite put my finger on it. And I simply do not have the will to find out what it is. ( )

As it was described in its Popular Library mass market

edition of 1952 - "A SAGA OF JUNGLE HATE AND LUST...She knew all about love! She was seventeen, she was beautiful and she was for sale to the highest bidder. Ma Hla May was her Burmese name. But in any language she was perfect, and well worth the 200 rupees Flory paid for her. All the way back to his jungle camp the Englishman felt the hot desire mount in him. But there was also a shyness in him, an apprehension about the girl's tender age and knowledge of men. Then they were in his room. The girl made herself ready. Flory stared at her in surprise,, Moments later he got an even greater surprise from innocent-eyed Ma Hla May. Flory had bought himself a wildcat!" ( )

An interesting and in many places rather distasteful picture of life in Burma under British rule. Most of the characters of all races and nationalities are rather unpleasant, with the exceptions of the central character Flory, who strives to be decent but is trapped in a lifestyle he cannot escape from, the Indian doctor Veraswami, with his basic humanity and unshakable faith in the British and, to some extent, the Deputy Commissioner Macgregor, who tries to preserve a certain decency and justice without challenging the system. Particularly horrible are the flagrantly racist Ellis, and the horrible Burmese manipulator U Po Kyin, though the behaviour of the cold-hearted Elizabeth Lackersteen and the military officer Verrall are also unpleasant. Not one of Orwell's better known works, but well worth reading. Finally, this could have done with a glossary to explain the large number of Burmese and Indian terms used. ( )

In George Orwell's essay "Why I Write," he says that his first published work of fiction, Burmese Days (1934), is the kind of book that he aspired to write at the age of sixteen when a passage from Milton's Paradise Lost sent "shivers down [his] backbone." Specifically, Orwell says that he wanted to write "enormous naturalistic novels with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their sound." Well alrighty, then; Go 16-year old Orwell!! I'm not sure that I agree with Orwell's implication that one finds the same kind of descriptions, similes, and "purple passages" in PL to which he aspired; however, I do agree with him in saying that he achieves his teen-aged aspiration in Burmese Days. This isn't the best book I've ever read; it isn't even on my top 10 list, a telltale sign being that I am not gushing on and on about it to whomever will listen like I do with any work by W.G. Sebald, but Burmese Days certainly kept me interested and thinking the entire time I was reading it.

Before I get into a discussion of the book itself, let me just say in an aside that one of the nice things about reading Orwell's non-fiction writing in The Collected Essays, Journalism, & Letters (Nonpareil Books – go to www.godine.com for more information or to purchase – comeon, it's an independent publisher – GO!!) from the time he is working on a particular fictional work is that, as I read the result of his efforts, I also am reading about the effort itself. As a writer and as an instructor of English composition, of course, I know that there is no such thing as a perfect first draft or really that any work is really ever finished, for that matter; deadlines are the only thing that really makes a writer stop. Reading through Orwell's correspondence during 1933 and '34, one sees Orwell vacillate between love and hate for this novel—typical of most writers, he is fairly pleased with what he just wrote and hates what he wrote last week. Additionally, any artist trying to get his work out to the public will appreciate Orwell's frustration as he attempts to jump through the various (and namely political) hoops of the publishing world to get his work published (or not published for fear of libel, as was the case with the one British publisher who was the first one to hold Burmese Days only to pass on it).

As for the novel itself, as I was reading Burmese Days, I kept thinking of E. M. Forster's A Passage To India (1924), for Orwell's work takes a similar look at the British attitude towards India during the British Raj. Both Forster and Orwell knew firsthand about the attitude of the English towards the Indians—the way they constantly compared cultures and sneered, covertly and openly, at the natives for allowing themselves to be governed by the empire while there was also a constant nervousness lest the native culture overtake the Brits in some form. Although it's been years since I read A Passage, I seem to remember the Indian Dr. Aziz as the more developed character than is Dr. Veraswami in Orwell's book, but both characters serve the same function—as evidence of an intelligent man who can see the laudable aspects as well as the imperfections of both cultures as well as of the political situation of colonization. It is because of their intelligence and objective view, however, that both Dr. Aziz and Dr. Veraswami are most at risk of becoming the victim when the two cultures clash.

Another book this brought to mind is one I read the summer before last called The Missionary by Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan), which is set in early seventeenth-century India rather than the early twentieth century setting of Burmese Days. The heroine in The Missionary is much stronger and more likeable than the heroine in either Forster's or Orwell's novel (dare I suggest this may be because a woman wrote The Missionary?). I think the similarities between Orwell and Owenson are not as strong, although again both works examine the aspects of cultural intolerance (with the focus in The Missionary being more on religious intolerance) that are often present with imperial rule. However, I think the reason that I remembered Owenson's book while reading Orwell was because of the futility of the love affairs in both works. Both authors give hints to the reader that the affair is doomed from the beginning. Ultimately, we root for the hero, Flory, to finally win Elizabeth because he wants her more than because we think love will win, for it's difficult to imagine Elizabeth is capable of the kind of love Flory envisions. But what struck me as I read this doomed love affair is how sometimes we fall in love with an image of a person that somehow gets into our heads rather than the real person. Orwell writes this of Flory's thoughts of Elizabeth:

For somehow, he had never been able to talk to her as he longed to talk. To talk, simply to talk! It sounds so little, and how much it is! When you have existed to the brink of middle age in bitter loneliness, among people to whom your true opinion on every subject on earth is blasphemy, the need to talk is the greatest of all needs. Yet with Elizabeth serious talk seemed impossible. It was as though there had been a spell upon them that made all their conversation lapse into banality: gramophone records, dogs, tennis racquets—all that desolating Club-chatter. She seemed not to want to talk of anything but that. He had only to touch upon a subject of any conceivable interest to hear the evasion, the 'I shan't play' , coming into her voice. … Later, no doubt, she would understand him and give him the companionship he needed. Perhaps it was only that he had not won her confidence yet. (117)


I like that passage for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I think this is the way those who justify imperial rule think about the colonial subjects. If only those stuborn subjects would see the benefits of being in love with empire, of having another culture usurp theirs—it would be a match made in heaven—if only …

Of course, politics notwithstanding, each of these books work as a good summer read for the plot and the characters alone. Owenson creates a strong female character at a time when strong female characters were not a matter of course; Orwell creates a savory villain in U Po Kyin, or "The Crocodile" as Dr. Veraswami calls him, and with all three of the above-mentioned books, you get to travel to far away lands without spending a fortune on fuel. Happy Reading and Bon Voyage! ( )