Emma Goto
A semi-biography of Eileen, the first wife of George Orwell. The author Anna Funder places quite a personal touch on the story, making it all the more interesting.
The book is a mix of letters from Eileen to her friend, facts about her life from other biographies, and the author then filling in the remaining gaps with a sort of fiction, imagining what Eileen’s life would have been like together with George.
As the title suggests, the author imagined the marriage as not necessarily a happy one. Although we can’t know for sure how Eileen felt about it (and she did stay married to Orwell). Eileen was quite an educated, accomplished woman in her own right - proofreading and suggesting corrections to Orwell’s Animal Farm, yet was also reduced to doing all of the household chores and waiting on George hand-and-foot. And when times were tough, she was the breadwinner while George kept on writing.
And George repays this by cheating on her (!) multiple times. The author takes care to point out that many men have written biographies about Orwell, and softened his image by suggesting that Eileen was also engaging in her own affairs - but Funder decidedly takes Eileen’s side, and assumes how she must have felt a sense of betrayal about it all (which would only be natural).
Orwell probably did love his wife in his own way, but you can’t help but feel the injustice of it all. But I wouldn’t place the blame solely on George either. Eileen could have walked away at any point, right? And maybe she was ultimately happy (or satisfied) serving George, who knows.
Funder admits that in her own relationship with her husband she too has felt herself slip into these more traditional gender roles without realising. So I think women have to be careful too, to not let men write their story for them.
Overall a bit depressing at times. It really does tear down the image of Orwell, and I’m sure for any Orwell fans you could see this book as overly biased in Eileen’s favour. But a rather interesting book nonetheless, and I love how Funder weaved all the various sources and her own imaginings all together.
A semi-biography of Eileen, the first wife of George Orwell. The author Anna Funder places quite a personal touch on the story, making it all the more interesting.
The book is a mix of letters from Eileen to her friend, facts about her life from other biographies, and the author then filling in the remaining gaps with a sort of fiction, imagining what Eileen’s life would have been like together with George.
As the title suggests, the author imagined the marriage as not necessarily a happy one. Although we can’t know for sure how Eileen felt about it (and she did stay married to Orwell). Eileen was quite an educated, accomplished woman in her own right - proofreading and suggesting corrections to Orwell’s Animal Farm, yet was also reduced to doing all of the household chores and waiting on George hand-and-foot. And when times were tough, she was the breadwinner while George kept on writing.
And George repays this by cheating on her (!) multiple times. The author takes care to point out that many men have written biographies about Orwell, and softened his image by suggesting that Eileen was also engaging in her own affairs - but Funder decidedly takes Eileen’s side, and assumes how she must have felt a sense of betrayal about it all (which would only be natural).
Orwell probably did love his wife in his own way, but you can’t help but feel the injustice of it all. But I wouldn’t place the blame solely on George either. Eileen could have walked away at any point, right? And maybe she was ultimately happy (or satisfied) serving George, who knows.
Funder admits that in her own relationship with her husband she too has felt herself slip into these more traditional gender roles without realising. So I think women have to be careful too, to not let men write their story for them.
Overall a bit depressing at times. It really does tear down the image of Orwell, and I’m sure for any Orwell fans you could see this book as overly biased in Eileen’s favour. But a rather interesting book nonetheless, and I love how Funder weaved all the various sources and her own imaginings all together.
A couple set out on a voyage across the ocean, but then their ship sinks, and they miraculously survive in a liferaft for 118 days. It’s a true story from the 1970s, and so the book is technically a sort of non-fiction but also reads like a fiction.
The husband, Maurice, wrote a book after the experience while the wife Maralyn kept a journal while they were adrift, so the book is also mixed in with occasional quotes from the pair themselves. The overall tone is a mix between fictional retelling and factual explanation (which makes more sense when you also realise the author is a journalist).
Also what I found interesting was it seems there was more recently a revived interest in the couple - Maurice was interviewed only a couple years before he passed away in 2019 by Alvaro Cerezo, and he had the foresight to also take photos of Maralyn’s journal.
Alvaro was also given a letter by Maurice which explained how he met his wife (https://paradise.docastaway.com/how-maurice-bailey-met-maralyn/) which upon reading was almost exactly how the encounter was described in the novel.
Maurice is quite a good storyteller in his own right so this sort of gives me mixed feelings - is A Marriage At Sea a good book because of its author, or because of how good the original story was to begin with? It’s a pity Maurice and Maralyn have both passed away and are unable to see the renewed interest in their story.
A couple set out on a voyage across the ocean, but then their ship sinks, and they miraculously survive in a liferaft for 118 days. It’s a true story from the 1970s, and so the book is technically a sort of non-fiction but also reads like a fiction.
The husband, Maurice, wrote a book after the experience while the wife Maralyn kept a journal while they were adrift, so the book is also mixed in with occasional quotes from the pair themselves. The overall tone is a mix between fictional retelling and factual explanation (which makes more sense when you also realise the author is a journalist).
Also what I found interesting was it seems there was more recently a revived interest in the couple - Maurice was interviewed only a couple years before he passed away in 2019 by Alvaro Cerezo, and he had the foresight to also take photos of Maralyn’s journal.
Alvaro was also given a letter by Maurice which explained how he met his wife (https://paradise.docastaway.com/how-maurice-bailey-met-maralyn/) which upon reading was almost exactly how the encounter was described in the novel.
Maurice is quite a good storyteller in his own right so this sort of gives me mixed feelings - is A Marriage At Sea a good book because of its author, or because of how good the original story was to begin with? It’s a pity Maurice and Maralyn have both passed away and are unable to see the renewed interest in their story.
About three sisters, set in a fairly dystopian future where crops are lost to blight, and people grow sick from the excessive use of blight-killers on the remaining crops. The youngest sister is also a keen sailor, so the story takes you on a journey via land and sea.
It’s a little depressing to read at times, but quite interesting! There is a focus on the relationships between the sisters which provides some more uplifting moments.
About three sisters, set in a fairly dystopian future where crops are lost to blight, and people grow sick from the excessive use of blight-killers on the remaining crops. The youngest sister is also a keen sailor, so the story takes you on a journey via land and sea.
It’s a little depressing to read at times, but quite interesting! There is a focus on the relationships between the sisters which provides some more uplifting moments.
This book is written by two computer scientists in the AI field. The seeds of this book started before the likes of ChatGPT took off, and so I found the first portion of the book quite enjoyable as the book covers some of the pitfalls of the AI technology that came before LLMs like machine-learning and predictive AI. e.g. the concept of "data leakage" - how a tool can be trained on a set of data, and work very well against just that set - but fall apart when you try and more broadly apply it.
Also details a funny (well, not really) story about how attempts at using predictive AI in a hospital to triage patients went wrong - the AI model found that patients with asthma were less likely to experience complications with pneumonia and so suggested that those patients should not be prioritised in the triaging process. When actually the reason the asthmatic patients generally didn't experience complications is because they were prioritised to begin with.
Also other examples around how AI tends to just reinforce the biases that we humans already have so it's quite a dangerous technology in that sense - an easy example in today's world is that if you prompt an AI for a picture of a doctor and nurse it will tend to stereotype and provide a male doctor and female nurse.
There was also a bit of an interesting detour into a section on how scary the effects of social media can be. e.g. how Facebook hires for its moderation team in a central location, rather than having moderators per-country. And without cultural context, moderators cannot accurately detect/remove hate speech especially when dealing with local slang, etc. And so Facebook has possibly inadvertently contributed to spreading violences in certain countries via its lack of moderation. I suppose this ties back to AI because it was a section on how we probably _can't_ use AI for moderation since it would be very difficult for AI to pick up on these cues.
It took me a long while to finish this book. I felt it start to drag on a bit and I lost my interest as it approached the present-day and covered LLMs like ChatGPT. I think this is a combination of how fast the industry is moving at the moment - if a book is published in 2024, it can very quickly start to go out of date. And I might be wrong, but possibly also more care was put into the first section of the book since the authors had quite a while to write it, before they suddenly rushed to finish it to capitalise on this recent AI boom.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
This book is written by two computer scientists in the AI field. The seeds of this book started before the likes of ChatGPT took off, and so I found the first portion of the book quite enjoyable as the book covers some of the pitfalls of the AI technology that came before LLMs like machine-learning and predictive AI. e.g. the concept of "data leakage" - how a tool can be trained on a set of data, and work very well against just that set - but fall apart when you try and more broadly apply it.
Also details a funny (well, not really) story about how attempts at using predictive AI in a hospital to triage patients went wrong - the AI model found that patients with asthma were less likely to experience complications with pneumonia and so suggested that those patients should not be prioritised in the triaging process. When actually the reason the asthmatic patients generally didn't experience complications is because they were prioritised to begin with.
Also other examples around how AI tends to just reinforce the biases that we humans already have so it's quite a dangerous technology in that sense - an easy example in today's world is that if you prompt an AI for a picture of a doctor and nurse it will tend to stereotype and provide a male doctor and female nurse.
There was also a bit of an interesting detour into a section on how scary the effects of social media can be. e.g. how Facebook hires for its moderation team in a central location, rather than having moderators per-country. And without cultural context, moderators cannot accurately detect/remove hate speech especially when dealing with local slang, etc. And so Facebook has possibly inadvertently contributed to spreading violences in certain countries via its lack of moderation. I suppose this ties back to AI because it was a section on how we probably _can't_ use AI for moderation since it would be very difficult for AI to pick up on these cues.
It took me a long while to finish this book. I felt it start to drag on a bit and I lost my interest as it approached the present-day and covered LLMs like ChatGPT. I think this is a combination of how fast the industry is moving at the moment - if a book is published in 2024, it can very quickly start to go out of date. And I might be wrong, but possibly also more care was put into the first section of the book since the authors had quite a while to write it, before they suddenly rushed to finish it to capitalise on this recent AI boom.
Originally posted at www.emgoto.com.
