If you're looking for a straight biography, this is not it. In attempting to piece together the life of George Orwell's wife, Eileen, Funder is forced to reckon with a deep anger within her for her own life as a wife. In between writing about both the facts and the fiction of Eileen's life, she touches on how the patriarchal demands of wifedom really haven't moved on that much at all and how women are still required to pick up all the slack to support men who supposedly, according to the media and writers, got to the heady heights of success all by themselves. Infuriating, fascinating and utterly absorbin

It is refreshing to discover how one lives as a famous writer’s wife. Writer Funder doesn’t only talk about Eileen’s marital duties, but also all her sacrifices. And feminism —or the lack of it from George Orwell’s wife Eileen. I found the book quite intriguing, that I didn’t notice how fast I was reading it… but I did notice I couldn’t put it down!

This was a good read for me. I am not sure what the complete truth of Eileen Orwell’s life with George was given the apparently scant material she left behind, but I am inclined to believe she was , like many of her generation - if not women to this day, overlooked, seen as an extra, doing wife work while a man did his own thing. I have to say I am not a fan of George Orwell , yes I have read his work in undergraduate days but that’s it. I assume no one argues with the fact he was often not there - especially near the end of her life at the adoption hearing for their son and for her illness that took her life. I was almost relieved she didn’t have to go to Jura with him although sad her life ended so soon and often was harsh. I wanted better for her. If this was not Eileen’s actual life it certainly portrayed a life many women, particularly in the interwar period and into the 40’s and 50’s led and certainly resonated with me.

This book has left me conflicted in so many ways. First of all, Anna Funder has painted a searing portrait of George Orwell that reveals him to be an unpleasant man, often in his personal life contradicting the ideas he preached against. As a lifelong Orwell fan, this hasn't sat with me too well for obvious reasons. But it has raised an important (and very current) question - can you ever truly separate the art from the artist? Secondly, although I fully appreciate what Funder is trying to do, I believe the lines between fact and fiction are so blurred here that it's hard for the reader to know the truth about Orwell and his relationship with his first wife, Eileen. It's undeniable that the wives of literary greats have been left out of history and we should absolutely be writing them back in, but not in a way that potentially projects our agenda and draws on more speculation than fact. Funder wants us to see Orwell for what she believes he was. A cruel misogynist who often abandoned his wife and took advantage of her unpaid labor which paved the way for his literary success. But she relies almost entirely on a handful of letters from Eileen as her factual evidence and we have no benefit of seeing the replies from Orwell. Through her blending of biography and supplementary fiction, it's hard to tell what's real. Is she imagining this portrayal of their relationship because it suits her anti-patriarchal agenda and the modern age, or was this their lived reality? We will never truly know... Although this is an important contribution toward understanding Eileen and their relationship, it is not without its flaws. It's very tempting to believe all of this as fact when a lot of it is filled in with the writer's imagination. Yes, Orwell was a deeply flawed man, nobody denies that anymore, even his biggest fans (including me). But can we ever truly know the extent of his relationship with his first wife, Eileen through the six letters she wrote between 1936-1945? Perhaps not.