Ratings330
Average rating3.9
Fifteen-year-old Alex and his three friends start an evening's mayhem by hitting an old man, tearing up his books and stripping him of money and clothes.
Or rather Alex and his three droogs tolchock an old veck, razrez his books, pull off his outer platties and take a malenky bit of cutter.
For Alex's confessions are written in 'nadsat' - the teenage argot of a not-too-distant future.
Because of his delinquent excesses, Alex is jailed and made subject to 'Ludovico's Technique,' a chilling experiment in Reclamation Treatment...
Horror farce? Social prophecy? Penetrating study of human choice between good and evil? A Clockwork Orange is all three, dazzling proof of Anthony Burgess's vast talents.
Reviews with the most likes.
Surprisingly, it didn't take long to get a hang of the 'made up' words. This book is a classic for a reason - but man, it isn't for the faint-hearted. The senseless violence does kind of get to you. I finished this book with a lot of important and heavy questions in my mind, definitely recommend for anyone who enjoys reading heavier stuff.
I only picked up this book because there was a sale going on and I've heard of this book having a sort of cult following. Supposed to be a rather shocking piece of work. Wonder what it says about me, since I didn't find it all that shocking. Sure, the beatings, the rapes, the break-ins... well, maybe it's a different era I suppose given what we see on TV and in the news these days.
The nadsat-talk “slang” was pretty easy to follow - you get the gist of the meaning. It was kinda interesting at first, but towards the end, I got weary of it.
The author seems to railing against the impetuousness of youth, uncontrolled youth at that, painting a dystopian society which turns almost lawless during the night. The violent narrator is an example of such a youth, one who got caught, was forcibly redeemed, and then reverted back. None of the other characters were ever much fleshed out; it was like they were all more symbolic, given what seems to be stereotypical characters - the backstabbing comrade, the brtual police, the self-serving politician, etc.
I don't really have much else to say about the plot. It wasn't all that interesting, except for that “redeeming” process, but then again, that isn't all that unheard of anymore, in this day and age. I also read the author's foreword rant, where he lamented the exclusion of the final chapter in the first edition. Neither endings felt satisfactory to me. One was sort of dangling, the other was a liitle too “eveything's ok now.”
Not sure how I felt about this book. Definitely won't read it again, and I read so many books for a second (third, fourth ...) time. This was interesting but extremely unsettling and violent. Glad I read it, but very happy to be finished.
The author would rather never written the book had he known there would be Kubrick's movie :-) He wrote the book as a cautionary/moral story, while the movie glorified violence. I liked both, and the movie ending better, but that's just my cynical taste.
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