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Phil Leader (619 KP) rated A Clockwork Orange in Books

Nov 11, 2019

Grab a moloko or hot chai and peet it with your rot while you viddy my malenky review with your glazzies, real horrorshow.

Welcome to the world of Alex, a 15 year old boy living in some unspecified country in an unspecified future time. What Alex enjoys is classical music and ultraviolence. Every night he and his gang terrorise the streets looking for any kind of criminal activity, the more violent the better. They steal, burgle, assault and rape, all for fun.

When Alex is caught he is put in prison and then rehabilitated using an experimental procedure. But what effect will this have on Alex? And will it produce the desired results of preventing the youth turning every night into a time of danger for all.

The first thing any reader notices about the book is that, told from Alex's point of view, he uses street slang throughout. This makes it clear that the young have their own culture and are quite separate from the adults in terms of outlook and thinking. It also makes the reading quite immersive, like learning a foreign language particularly as only a very few of the words are ever explained and must be learned from context. This makes for a steep learning curve at the start of the book but it is worth the effort. The use of slang terms for the violent acts also helps to soften them a little - clearly what Alex does is horrendous but as it is described using these terms it is perhaps not so graphic as it would be otherwise.

Like critics of the film, it would be unfair to focus purely on the violence. The book is divided neatly into three parts. In the first we follow Alex as he perpetrates a number of terrible crimes. The second part describes his experiences in prison and is rehabilitation. The third what happens when he returns to society.

Burgess is clearly trying to make a number of points about individuality and state control of its citizens, and a fairly heavy handed job he makes of it too. But this is a slight volume - the paperback I read ran to a mere 140 pages - so there is little time for subtlety.

I would say the first two sections of the book were the best. The third section suffers a little from being rushed - it would have been better to have more insight into the world of the 'new' Alex - and also of the story being driven by coincidence after coincidence. This really did make the book seem like a sort of dream sequence where previous characters appeared and suddenly took on new meanings. In fact what it reminded me most of was the interrogation sequence in Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man. This did detract from the story for me but not enough to do much damage to the tale. The ending is particularly strong and positive, in a book full of desperation it strikes the perfect counternote.

For anyone interested in the social side of 'science fiction' this is definitely worth reading. A morality tale for the future.

Rated: Frequent and extreme violence