Written in 1962 by Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange is a dark and disturbing tale of a 15 year old delinquent by the name of Alex. Alex is the youngest and most ruthless member, also the leader of a group of droogs (a gang). Alex leads his band of chaos makers on midnight rampages to settle their urges for a bit of the old ultra violence, as they describe it, a true horror show you might say.

As the novel progresses, Alex's late night deeds and strong-arming catch up to him, eventually leading to his imprisonment for a term of 14 years. Trying to be a model prisoner, Alex signs up for a new treatment that is meant to reform the un-reformable.

Most people know of A Clockwork Orange from the excellent movie by Stanley Kubrick, myself included. Being such a fan of the film I decided to pick up the book and I was blown away. As much as I enjoyed the film, the book was far more intense.

Burgess at times stated how much he hated the film and Kubrick himself, but in truth I found only a few changes made to the story. The biggest being the age of Alex. In the film he appeared in his late teens or early twenties, in the book he had just turned 15, which made his actions that more horrible. This is truly shown in the scene where he picks up two ten year old girls in a record store gets them drunk and repeatedly introduces them to Alexander "De Large" as he sexually assaults them over and over. In the film the girls were willing victims and much older. There is also an additional chapter of the book that is left out of the film, which goes on to say what happens to Alex later in life after quote "Being cured", that gives a truly good closer to the story.

All this being said, I must tell you all this, if I had not seen the film first I would not have enjoyed the book nearly as much, due to one of the best aspects of the movie and book, the language. Burgess invented a form of slang that he called Nadsat, which is a mix of english, russian, slang and words that Burgess himself created. If you have seen the movie, you know how much this adds to it, but when you first pick up the book, it is very hard to follow, unless of course you have seen the film.

Also after seeing the film multiple times, it stays extremely close to the storyline which when the few changes that I noticed come into play, they are actually better than what’s in the film. Which is best exampled when the Alex-less lives of Pete, Georgie and Dim, Alex's droogs, is brought back into the book.

A Clockwork Orange is a great book, if you are a fan of the film, then this is a must read, if you have never seen the movie, buy it and the book today, watch the movie, learn the Nasdat and read the book until your dreams begin to be filled real horror show with images of the old ultra violence and you find yourself tolchoking old grumblies going blurp blurp to the viddies of their past deeds.

10/10