Burning Down George Orwell's House

In his latest advertising campaign, Ray Welter uses his favorite Orwellian "newspeak" to make driving a gas-guzzling SUV appear to be a public service to America. That success, coupled with an impending divorce, makes Welter question his life and its meaning. Hoping to drop off the grid and remake himself, he sells everything he owns and retreats to Scotland's Isle of Jura, where he rents the house George Orwell lived in when he wrote 1984. Unfortunately, the residents of Jura don't actually take to strangers, despite their reputation for hospitality. As he unwinds this tale, Ervin (Extraordinary Renditions) writes with skill and a penchant for the absurd. Welter is everyman, caught up in a life he can't escape, searching for a way to come to terms with himself. The host of eccentric and sometimes sociopathic characters that surround him give this book the quality of a bad but very funny dream.