George Orwell, best known for his dystopian novel ‘1984’, writes this essay revealing how monotonous and difficult the life of a book reviewer is. He starts the essay by describing the unkempt, cold, noisy and poor conditioned workplace of the book reviewer, proceeding to how monotonous and joyless the work is and ends it, comparing the life with that of a film reviewer and taking solace from the fact that the film reviewer has it far worse than him. 

Orwell, in the essay, describes the harsh conditions writers had to live in at the time (just after Second World War). After describing the poverty stricken, malnourished, ageing writer in the first two paragraphs he proceeds to write“Needless to say this person is a writer”. Stating the hopeless and desolate his life is. The book reviewer seems to be living alone, unkempt, poor andtired of his lifestyle.

The job of book reviewing seems to be stressful as the reviewer appears to be considerably older than he actually is. “He is a man of 35, but looks 50”. “He is bald, has varicose veins” and his eye sights are weak.He seems to be recovering; two hours late form his schedule, from what appears to be a hangover. He rarely seems to be getting paid for his work and when he does he wastes it in alcohol.  Heis to be rather frustrated, anxious and lazy from the constant noise barging into his work. He is desperately poor and constantly suffering. 

This particular book reviewer seems to be relying solely on his instinct. He procrastinates until the last moment and then when the clock starts ticking and his jump to work. There is little or no deliberation in his work. No matter how late the book reviewer seems to start his work, he always seems to have finished it expertly in time which suggests that he is good at his work. He seems to have started his job a few years ago with vigor and excitement. 

But now he is disillusioned and the job of book reviewing doesn’t attract him as it did then. The job is said to be “nerve wracking” which suggests that this particular writer is of a nervous temperament.  He is tired of ‘praising thrash’ and writing ‘stale old buzzwords’ but doesn’t have anyother option. He occasionally gets to review fiction but that’s if he turned out to be very lucky.He seems to have been finally wearing off after toiling tirelessly in this thankless job for years. 

Towards the end the essay the reviewer takesrefuge on the fact that no matter how bad his life gets, it will never get as bad as that of the film reviewer. Orwell suggests that since most of those books are unreadable garbage, the best thing for the book reviewer to do would be to ignore them and give them a good 1,000 word review.