A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

In this nightmare vision of a not-too-distant future, fifteen-year-old Alex and his three friends rob, rape, torture and murder – for fun. Alex is jailed for his vicious crimes and the State undertakes to reform him – but how and at what cost?

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[‘What’s it going to be then, eh?’]

(Penguin, 4 August 2011, first published 1962, 176 pages, ebook, A Year of @EpicReads 2019, a book about an anti-hero, borrowed from @GlasgowLib and @OverDriveLibs)

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I didn’t rate the movie by much so I’m not sure why I expected anything different from the book. Still, it’s usually my experience that the book is much better than the film. Though not in this case it seems. I don’t understand why this book is so highly rated and considered a modern classic. Each to their own, I guess. I’ve heard some say this book is even more violent than the movie which is pretty violent. I didn’t really notice that. The main issue with this book is the language used. Alex uses his own dialect and words for most of the book. At times, I could only understand part of what was being said. I had to read sections several times to fully understand what was being said. A load of pretentious hogwash if you ask me. A Clockwork Orange may be a classic or very violent and maybe even a masterpiece but the language used is gibberish. I didn’t enjoy even a little of this.

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