Coming Up for Air — George Orwell

An insurance salesman desperately tries to recapture his youth in this “charming” comic novel by the iconic British author (The New York Times).

George Bowling is having a crisis. Not a loud, unsightly one, but a small, desperate one. His days are occupied by an unfulfilling insurance job; his nights spent worrying about his mortgage, marriage, expanding waistline, and what seems to be a certain prospect of World War II looming on the horizon. So when George unexpectedly hits it big on a lucky horse, he spends the windfall on the only thing he ever knew to make him happy: his childhood.
 
George travels back to his boyhood home of Lower Binfield, swimming in vivid memories of worry-free bliss, sights, sounds, smells, and emotions of a pre-war world. But while the idyllic village in George's head may not have seen battle, the reality may be more sobering than he is prepared to deal with.
 
Penned with Orwell's trademark insight and passion, Coming Up for Air is an elegiac look at memory and desire at a desperate moment in England's history.