A Clockwork Orange: Anthony Burgress

[Dark Muse]

A Clockwork Orange is the story about a group of violent youths, when one of them, Alex the narrator of the story is finally picked up by the police, he is entered into a special new treatment program by the government, intended to cure him of his badness and transform him into a good member of society. But after completely the treatment and being released, things do not go quite as planned.

The novel starts out rather brutally, but beneath its dark exterior, it is really quite hilarious as well. As much as you may wish to despise Alex, he does make a charming narrator for his story.

The way that Burgress uses language is very clever and witty, though at first it is difficult to get use to the strange slang he incorporates, and I had to acutely find a glossary online to help follow the book, you get use to it fairly quickly.

Overall I really enjoyed this story

[JBI]

It was good, to be honest, but is highly overrated (as most books are when they have excellent movies made from them). The ending was a little too optimistic for me, and the beginning seems a little too pointless in my opinion. It was meh at best, being that none of the characters besides the narrator are real characters, and that even the narrator has some uncharacter moments.

[John Goodman]

One of my favourite books. It's darkly humorous and the slang takes the book to a new level. It's a short read, so you really don't have an excuse for not picking it up.

[Sir Bartholomew]

i never cared about the dystopian plot, actually. i've seen the movie a couple of times so it made me focus more on its words. it's the NADSAT that made me love this book. read it out loud, great reading experience.

[Dark Muse]

Yeah, sense reading the book I began using NADSAT myself

[djy78usa]

I really enjoyed the book. I saw the movie several times before I read it, so it was a "will the book live up to the movie," instead of the more traditional "movie living up to the book" situation for me.

[Virgil]

Well, I thought it was a truely great novel. It stands with the greatest. Dark Muse, I'm surprised your book didn't include a glossary. Many editions do.

[Dark Muse]

Hehe yeah after reading the first chapter and barely understanding it I looked through the book and did not find one.

[JBI]

It's better without a glossary. Seriously, it isn't supposed to be translated. You are supposed to read it and make sense of it yourself, you know, really get the feel for it.

[djy78usa]

Here's a link to a Nadsat dictionary:

http://soomka.com/nadsat.html

[Drkshadow03]

It was good, to be honest, but is highly overrated (as most books are when they have excellent movies made from them). The ending was a little too optimistic for me, and the beginning seems a little too pointless in my opinion. It was meh at best, being that none of the characters besides the narrator are real characters, and that even the narrator has some uncharacter moments.

When did you feel Alex was being out-of-character? I didn't find the ending optomistic at all.

[Dark Muse]

It's better without a glossary. Seriously, it isn't supposed to be translated. You are supposed to read it and make sense of it yourself, you know, really get the feel for it.

Well I enjoyed reading it with the glossary

[ben.!]

I read A Clockwork Orange learning bits of Nadsat here and there from context, and for the ending part I had found a full glossary courtesy of Wikipedia.

I enjoyed it, the language did not inhibit the narrative in any way, and I found Alex quite a twisted creation, before and after the treatment. All in all, an interesting look on a rather dystopian future. I say it's up there with 1984 in terms of me enjoying it and its subject matter.

[JBI]

When did you feel Alex was being out-of-character? I didn't find the ending optomistic at all.

Well, did you read the American or British edition? The British one has an extra chapter, which was cut from the American one for being too optimistic (a move I agree with).

Basically, everything that happens after he gets hit with the milk can seems out of character in one way or another. His life in prison to me seems the most out of character in many ways. I don't want to dig for quotes, so please don't push me further.

[kat.]

I really want to read this one....but as you just wrote there#s a lot of slang in it....I guess I will kind of struggle for my English