시녀 이야기

The Handmaid’s Tale #1

by Margaret Atwood, 김선형 (Translator)

성과 권력의 어두운 관계를 파헤친 섬뜩한 미래 예언서 <시녀 이야기>의 특별 양장본이 황금가지에서 출간되었다. <시녀 이야기>는 마거릿 애트우드가 1985년 발표한 장편소설이다. 이 작품은 출간되자마자 「뉴욕 타임스」, 「워싱턴 포스트」의 베스트셀러에 올라, 수개월 동안 그 자리를 지키면서 애트우드를 일약 화제 작가로 급부상시켰다.

발표 당시 이 소설은 여성을 오직 자궁이라는 생식 기관을 가진 도구로만 본다는 설정 때문에 큰 충격을 불러일으켰으며, 출간한 지 30년이 되어가는 오늘날에 와서는 성과 가부장적 권력의 어두운 이면을 파헤친, 작가의 예리한 통찰력으로 인해 시대를 뛰어넘는 고전으로 평가받고 있다. 최근 Hulu 채널을 통해 드라마로 새롭게 선보이며 또다시 주목받고 있다. 현재(2017년 5월) 미국 최대 인터넷 서점인 Amazon 차트 1위에 등극하였다.

21세기 중반, 전지구적인 전쟁과 환경 오염, 각종 성질환으로 출생률이 급격히 감소하면서 미국은 극심한 혼란 상태에 빠진다. 이때를 틈타 가부장제와 성경을 근본으로 한 전체주의 국가 '길리아드'가 일어나 국민들을 폭력적으로 억압하는데, 특히 여성들을 여러 계급으로 분류하여, 교묘하게 통제하고 착취하기 시작한다. 이에 평화롭게 살던 여인 오프브레드는 어느 날 갑자기 이름과 가족을 뺏긴 채 사령관의 '시녀'가 되어, 삼엄한 감시 속에 그의 아이를 수태하도록 강요받는다.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Feminism, Book Club, Fantasy

528 pages, Hardcover

First published April 17, 1985

About the author

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.

Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth ­ in the Massey series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.

Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.

Associations: Margaret Atwood was President of the Writers' Union of Canada from May 1981 to May 1982, and was President of International P.E.N., Canadian Centre (English Speaking) from 1984-1986. She and Graeme Gibson are the Joint Honourary Presidents of the Rare Bird Society within BirdLife International. Ms. Atwood is also a current Vice-President of PEN International.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's been almost five years since I wrote my review. I've rewritten large parts of it for clarity. The main idea remains the same.

Extremist Judeo-Christian beliefs have won America's culture war. Now women have no rights. They are slaves to men and the biblical, patriarchal society in which they live. The Handmaid's Tale is the first-person account of one of these enslaved women.

Massachusetts Turns Into Saudi Arabia?
More than thirty years have passed since The Handmaid's Tale was first published in 1985, but many still think of it as the go-to book for feminist fiction. It makes numerous "best of" lists, the kinds with 99 other books everyone should read before dying. Even so, The Handmaid's Tale frustrates me a lot—and not only because it contains run-on sentences and needlessly abandons quotation marks. (This is no train wreck like José Saramago's Blindness, but it's bad enough.) Simply put, if you can ignore whether you agree or disagree with Margaret Atwood's ideas about politics, religion, and women's rights, the plot and setting make no sense.

The religiosity of the Reagan era inspired Atwood's dystopia, in which fundamentalist Christians have taken over society. While that premise does give me the heebie-jeebies, Atwood’s taken the idea to a literal extreme to make a point. This ruins the foundation of The Handmaid's Tale because most American fundies would balk at this world. Atwood imagines the extreme of the extreme and in the process completely misunderstands American evangelicalism.

I'm a heathen bastard and no fan of religion. Fundamentalism has hurt people, particularly women, for millennia. Extremism continues to hurt people every day, especially in some parts of the world, especially in some states. Even so, it's hard to accept Atwood's dystopia when it's set in the U.S., in the near future—and in Massachusetts, one of the most progressive states in the country, one of only sixteen states in the union with state constitutional protections for abortion (since 1981, I believe). Massachusetts is a liberal bastion when it comes to American women's reproductive rights, so it's an odd setting for this brand of nightmare. In recent decades, Massachusetts is also one of the least religious states, so it's an odd setting for a theocracy, too.

Atwood chose Massachusetts for its puritanical history. I can embrace the connection to the Reagan administration, in the same way I can embrace Orwell's fear of communism in 1984, but to imagine an unchanging, puritanical Massachusetts requires a bit too much.

Societies Don't Change Overnight
The Handmaid's Tale is told in first person by a woman who’s lived in our present day (more or less), as well as in this dark fundamentalist Tomorrowland. She’s gone from wearing flip-flops and sundresses to a full-body religious habit, color-coded red to match her subservient role. She was married once, had a child. Now she’s another’s property, one of the handmaids sent from one man’s house to another. The hope is that she will become pregnant when a prominent man’s wife cannot. Her life has been flipped and made forfeit. She lives in fear and depression and abuse. This is meant to make me unnerved, and it does.

But.

Simply because an author wants to comment on society doesn’t mean he or she can ignore important, logical story elements. The logic part should be emphasized here, I think, given this is supposed to be science fiction, not fantasy. (Although Atwood does insist The Handmaid's Tale is speculative fiction, because that further legitimizes her story...or something? Never mind that sci-fi and fantasy are types of speculative fiction.)

There’s a question I have that never gets answered, not properly at least. How did this happen so quickly? How did we go from "burning bras" to having every part of our lives regulated? Why did it take Massachusetts decades, centuries, to reject puritanism, but only a few years(?) to reject liberalism?

Rights can erode, but you don’t see it happen on such a large scale and so seamlessly, and not overnight. Nothing happens overnight, especially not governmental takeovers in relatively stable, secular societies, which is the book's scenario.

Societies evolve, one way or another, usually rather slowly. Civil, moral, and regime changes don't sneak up on you. It wasn't the case in Germany before Hitler, in China before Mao, in Afghanistan before the Taliban, in Syria before its civil war. It's not the case in 2016, with people like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump leading in GOP primary polls. The world may be disappointing and horrible sometimes, but it is rarely surprising.

If Atwood had built her dystopia on a chain of events that occurred over a longer period of time, or explained how everything unraveled so quickly, I might have been on board with the premise. That isn't how The Handmaid's Tale is written, though. The explanations for the sudden changes are fantastical, at best, dependent on evil, digitized money—be careful with the mobile payments and bitcoins, ladies!—and misogynistic, conservative conspiracies that readers are to believe could bring millions of people to a stupefied halt and change culture in the blink of an eye. Apparently it’s easy to gun down all of Congress while it’s in session. Who knew?

I don’t buy it.

You can change laws all you want, but society, culture, has to be willing to follow the most drastic changes. (This is why the American Drug War has never worked, why prohibition of alcohol never worked, why banning abortion didn't work.) Why was modern American society so willing to enslave women?

Atwood chucks a plot point at you here or there, hinting at a larger, more complex world through her main character. There’s a vague fertility crisis (of course). There's conflict somewhere between some people about some stuff, but details are never given. Some of this can be excused, what with the limited point of view, but not all. Plot holes aren't mysterious or clever. They're just plot holes.

By the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, I feel the book is less an exploration of religious extremism and feminism than it is a narrative written for shock value. It’s an irrational feminist’s fears exposed, that the world is out to get you at every turn—especially the men, especially the women controlled and brainwashed by the men. Nowhere is safe. Overall, the summary for this book could be this: Almost anyone with a penis is mostly unfeeling and evil, deep down. (The rest are idiots, I suppose.) He doesn’t care. He will betray you at the first opportunity. Even when you're dead and gone, he will chuckle at your misfortune and demise. No, this isn’t sexist or a generalization. Of course not. Not at all.

Except it is.

Asides
- For a slightly more accurate portrayal of American Christian fundamentalism and its very awkward relationship with women, see Hillary Jordan's When She Woke . It makes several nods to The Scarlet Letter and The Handmaid's Tale—and better understands its villains and their behavior.

- Two nonfiction books, Jenny Nordberg's The Underground Girls of Kabul and Ned & Constance Sublette's The American Slave Coast: The History of the Slave-Breeding Industry , will show you what it's really like to live in a society where women are chattel.

- Some think that because I dislike this book I'm not a feminist, or am a bad feminist. I hate to break it to everyone, but Margaret Atwood is not feminism's god, and The Handmaid's Tale is not a religious text. If I must attach labels to myself, feminist would be one of them, and I'll say and think whatever I damn well please. And as a feminist, I hate how one-dimensional the men are in this book, just as much as I hate how one-dimensional women are in far more books, TV shows, and movies. Deal with it. Or don't. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Sean Barrs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been moved by books in the past, many times, but I’ve never before read a book that has emotionally drained me to such a degree. This is frightening and powerful. And sometimes it only takes a single paragraph to make you realise how much so:

“Yes, Ma’am, I said again, forgetting. They used to have dolls, for little girls, that would talk if you pulled a string at the back; I thought I was sounding like that, voice of a monotone, voice of a doll. She probably longed to slap my face. They can hit us, there’s Scriptural precedent. But not with any implement. Only with their hands.”

Needless to say, this is an absolutely awful situation. From the very beginning, I knew how much I was going to like this book. Its story isn’t one that it is simply read: it demands to be heard. It beckoned me to see the full force of the situation. The Handmaids, the average woman, have no free will or individualism; they are treated as simple baby producing machines. An oppressive regime is forced upon them, and to deviate from the said standard results in a slow and agonising death. There’s no hope or joy for them, only perpetual subjugation.

Indeed, this is where Atwood’s awe inspiringly persuasive powers reside. By portraying such a bleak situation, she is able to fully demonstrate what life could be like if we suddenly followed the misogynistic views of the old testament with fierce intensity. Women would have no power whatsoever. This would be reinforced by a complete cultural destruction and lack of any form of self-expression. They would not be able to read or write; they would not be able to speak their minds. It would even go as far as to condition them so powerfully, that they completely lack the ability of independent thought. And, to make it even worse, the women know no difference. Sure, the narrator of this remembers her past, but she’s not allowed to. She is forced to repress any sense of individual sentiment.

“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”



The narrator has a horrendous ordeal, in an equally as horrendous world. The notion was devised as a response against a drastic decrease in birth-rates. Men in power have taken complete control of women in both body and mind to insure an increase in the declining birth-rates. As I mentioned, their individualism is repressed, but the men also prevent any physical freedom. The women are owned by the state, by the men and by corruption; their bodies are nothing more than a means to provide new life. In this, they are degraded to a state of sub-human existence; they are no longer people. Atwood suggests that they are merely a reproductive organ, one that can be discarded without thought, mercy or conscience. This is reinforced on every level; the language delivers this on a revealing scale. The names are suggestive of the oppression; the protagonist is called “Offred.” She is of-Fred: she belongs to him. The women are assigned names that are not their own; they are dubbed with the disgusting title of “Handmaiden.” By doing so they are left with very little of their former lives. The women are simply objects to be used, controlled and destroyed and the slightest hint of nonconformity to such an absurd system. But, here’s the rub. The best, and most haunting, thing about this novel is its scary plausibility.

The culture created is evocative of one that could actually exist. The way the men attempt to justify its existence is nothing short of terrifying. They make it sound perfectly normal. Well, not normal, but an idea that could be justified to a people. Not that it is justifiable, but the argument they present has just enough eerie resemblance to a cold, logical, response to make it seem probable in its misguided vileness. The totalitarian elements provide an image of a people that will do endure anything if they’re provided with a glimpse of liberty. The small degree of liberty the Handmaids think they have doesn’t actually exist: it’s an illusion, a trick, a shadow on the wall. They’re manipulated into believing it and become frenzied in the face of it. It is the ultimate means of control in its nastiness.

“A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.”

This book was horrifying and strangely perceptive. If you’re thinking about reading this, stop thinking, just read it. It’s brilliant. It’s a book I will definitely be reading again because it is just so thought provoking and disturbing.

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[Adina ( back from Vacay…slowly recovering) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update 2022: As Stephen King wrote on Twitter: Welcome to The Handmaid's Tale


I. Night

I am lying awake in my bed. I keep my eyes closed and beg sleep to come. Fruitlessly! Outside, the rain is whipping the windows without mercy. My husband is sleeping next to me, oblivious to my struggle. I need my thoughts to go away. I need to forget that I just finished the Handmaid's Tale and its effect on me. I knew I should have resumed myself to the self-imposed daily quota of 10%. But no. I had to read the last 30 % in one go and now I can't sleep because of it. It’s like a shot of caffeine to my veins. How can I review such a book? How can I explain how I feel? I don’t even know. I can't say I enjoyed it. I was both dreading and expecting to open the pages. I wanted it to be over, like I want a punishment to be over. It made me choke; I was uncomfortable and in pain the whole 312 pages. However, I was also in awe to the power and poetry of Atwood's writing. The last novel they made me feel this way was Never Let Me Go. I can still smell the heavy the heavy atmosphere. Submission! This is it. Both were about submission to a terrible destiny. I could not understand and accept it then and I cannot do it now. Or can I? What would I do to survive, if submission were the only hope? There is a knot in my throat.

What she wrote in this novel, the world she created is absurd isn't it? It cannot happen, not in a million years, right? We are past this, we have evolved enough. We cannot get there. It would be terrible, unthinkable. It is absurd to think that people’s will can be so easily obliterated, that minds can be erased and that fear can rule one’s life into submission. And still... Kim Jung-Un in Korea, Putin in Russia, more recently the election in Turkey. Trump is just as dangerous. Le Pen can become the next president in France. Yes the daughter of the man that said that Holocaust did not exist. The world is a dangerous place and freedom is fragile. We need to open our eyes, be vigilant and never be complacent with what we have so it is not taken from us.

I still cannot sleep. The rain becomes even more punishing. My mind races. I think about the past of my country. In the end of the novel, at Historical Notes, there were a few examples of other similar regimes that reacted as Gilead. It said that Romania has anticipated Gilead in the eighties by banning all forms of birth control, and imposing other restrictions. How I wished this was also part of the author’s imagination. Ok, there were no compulsory pregnancy tests and promotion did not depend on fertility but a decree was passed by Ceausescu, our last communist president where all birth control and abortion was banned. The punishment for not complying was severe; women were imprisoned and beaten to confess. During the 20 years when the decree was in place, more than 10,000 women died from illegal, mostly home-made abortions. Another world where men controlled women’s body. Not so long ago. We cannot go back to that, can we?

Motherhood. Another hurtful subject. To have your child taken away from you. To be unable to have a child and have your husband conceive with someone else while you watch. A nightmare for any woman (or man). No more love, no more sex for pleasure. No, here I draw the line. I cannot see this happen. And still…

Historical Notes
The above memoir of a distressed reader that could not sleep because of the Handmaid’s Tale, was found in the notes of a mobile phone. It is hard to identify the person that wrote the document as there were probably many people that lost sleep over this novel in Atwood’s republic. She tends to write some uncomfortable stuff, that author. We cannot confirm the authenticity of the document, still the disturbed tone suggests that the person actually read the Handmaid’s Tale and was deeply impressed by it. And scared.

P.S. I found in another review an interesting article wrote by Atwood where she discusses the book. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/bo...

[Jayson · Rating 4 out of 5]

(A-) 80% | Very Good
Notes: Its scarlet woman's pretty passive, target of temptation, not much plot, though food for thought is ample captivation.

*Check out progress updates for detailed commentary:

Progress updates:

01/01/2023 - Preamble:
(1) It's been New Year tradition for me to have either my first book of the year or the last book of the preceding year (some years both) be a super-popular novel.
- "The Handmaid's Tale" was on clearance!
(2) When I say "super-popular," I don't mean the YA novel de jour that practically no one outside Goodreads has even heard of. I mean books that everyone knows, possibly a classic or due to a hit adaptation.

01/02/2023 - Chapters 1-8:
(1) This threw me for a bit of a loop with its use of selective quotation marks.
- Only words spoken in the immediate present get quotation marks. Anything else, be it written or a recollection, doesn't get them.
(2) Chapters 1-8 involve a trip to buy groceries.
- Definitely more about the journey than the destination.
- It does a great job at worldbuilding. Immersive and memorable, albeit somewhat uneventful.

01/03/2023 - Chapters 9-17:
(1) Around 100 pages in, and finally we have the inciting incident.
- In dystopian stories, it's usually the main character daring to undertake an act of rebellion, risking their life in the process: think Winston writing in his diary or Katniss volunteering as Tribute.
- Here's it's a pair of chapters where you have the expected/shocking duty of a handmaid, contrasted with the aforementioned act of rebellion.

01/04/2023 (1) - Chapters 18-24:
(1) "All I can hear now is the sound of my own heart, opening and closing, opening and closing, opening"
- This last line of Chapter 24 doesn't end with a punctuation, which is interesting, as well as perplexing.
- To me, it could either mean that her heart stayed open after that third round, or that, since the sentence has no end, the pattern keeps repeating indefinitely. I suppose either theory is plausible.

01/04/2023 (2) - Chapters 25-30:
(1) When I said before that the inciting incident didn't come until a third of the way into the book, I was wrong. That was a false start. It actually comes halfway through the book.
- It's been all world-building until then.
- In a twist on convention, "the rebel" isn't so clear cut.
(2) Part of the reason why I don't read much literary fiction is precisely because plot often plays second fiddle to symbolism.

01/05/2023 - Chapters 31-39:
(1) Even this far into the book, I don't know that I can identify a definite plot.
- This whole book has been the main character either telling things or learning things.
(2) This may possibly be the most passive protagonist I've ever read.
- More noticeable since it's a dystopian story.
- She doesn't actually rebel at all, except perhaps in her head. Really, she's coerced into breaking rules by everyone else.

01/06/2023 - Chapters 40-46:
(1) I don't know what to make of this book. Going into the last few short chapters, I thought to myself that this better end with some oomph because there's been very little of that so far.
- I can't say it ultimately did, though I can't say it was disappointing either.
(2) The ending's meant to be ambiguous, which I can appreciate. Though the epilogue tells you what happened, which takes some steam out of it.

[Victoria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a very well written book. The writing itself is clumsy. It doesn't feel like you're reading a story; it feels like you're reading a piece of writing. Good writers put their words together for a calculated effect, but Atwood's words aren't just calculated-- they're contrived. In a good piece of writing, you shouldn't see the writer at all. You shouldn't see the structure of their writing. All you should see is the story. If you're seeing the deliberate cadence of a phrase, or the use of repetition instead of its effect, then these style choices weren't done subtly enough. If you can see the writer's style through their words, then they're just not doing it right. I think Atwood very much falls into this trap. Her style lacks the subtlety required to tell a story like this.

The other problem is that it's impossible to forget that this was written in the mid-1980s. The appeal of dystopian fiction, I thought, was that it served as a timeless warning against the pitfalls of humanity. Of course, I'm not a big fan of dystopian writing, so I can only draw on 1984 again as a reference, but: the great thing about 1984 is that it doesn't read like it was written in 1948. It doesn't read as an unambiguous warning against communism, which would make it static and irrelevant today, where the red threat has passed. It is as yet a timeless story, a warning against the state, which did not discredit itself in 1989, but which instead took on a new meaning. Today, one doesn't read Orwell as a warning against communism in particular, but against oppression in general. What's great about 1984 is that it is ambiguous enough to remain dynamic and relevant through reinterpretation, but real enough that it resonates across the years to mean something still.

The Handmaid's Tale doesn't carry that kind of resonance. It's just not, to me, that powerful a story, and then Atwood drops in details, devices, that ground it more and more solidly into the mid-80s. That the novel is set contemporary to her writing it fixes the action in time. She makes reference to real movies, real magazines, real time frames, real places, real events. But to understand them, you need to have an intimate understanding of what was going on in the world in 1985. You need to understand what North American culture was like. You need to understand how American history was being interpreted. But you also need to understand that Iran was a new player, a new threat on the world stage, and you need to understand how the world reacted to it.

But these background concepts are not universal, nor are they timeless. Already people are forgetting about the 1980s brand of feminism, and already people are forgetting about the Iranian revolution. And North American culture is not a homogeneous as it once was: today the religious right could not stage a coup as is described in the novel, because there are too many diverse groups and networks today who would oppose it. Arguably the religious right has seized power, but not like that. Atwood's vision of an extremist revolution is dated, which makes me question the validity of the other warnings she puts forth.

That's not to say that I think it's a bad book. Atwood does advance some chilling theories about the future of mankind, and even as I sat there shaking my head and going, "that could never happen," the possibilities are deeply disturbing. The novel served as a warning in its own time, and it is interesting to read it with that in mind. And if you like dystopian fiction, then it is definitely worth a read. I just have a problem in reconciling the novel's message with today's reality, where Atwood's fears actually seem to be the least of our worries.

[Emily May · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are only a small handful of books that have affected me in a REALLY personal way. In a way that I always try to put into words and always, ultimately, fail. I have read a lot of books over the years and I've liked many, disliked plenty too, loved and hated a smaller amount... but out of the thousands I've read, there's less than ten - maybe even less than five, now I think about it - that honestly hit me so hard that I would go so far as to say they changed me.

The Handmaid's Tale is a book that changed my life.

I know, I know, big dramatic statement to make. I hear you. And normally I wouldn't say that, even about books I give five glowing stars; but with this book it is nothing short of the truth. This book was the spark that turned me into a feminist. It was the spark that made me interested in gender politics and, through that, politics in general. One of my favourite teachers in the world gave me this book and said "I think you'll like this one."

She was so wrong.

I didn't like this book; I loved it. And I hated it. I lost sleep over it. I lived in it. I was so completely absorbed into this world, into this dark but oddly quiet dystopian reality. There is something about the tone of Atwood's novels that works like a knife to my heart. Quiet, rich, the drama just bubbling under the surface of the prose. Atwood doesn't waste words, she doesn't sugarcoat her stories with meaningless phrases, everything is subtle and everything is powerful.

This dystopia is a well-told feminist nightmare. An horrific portrait of a future that seems far too reminiscent of aspects of our own society and its very real recent history. The best kind of dystopian fiction is, for me, that which convinces me this world might or could happen. Atwood's world-building may be sparse and built up gradually as the story unfolds, but she slowly paints a portrait of stifling oppression and injustice that had me hanging on her every word.

For someone like me who was so caught up in Offred's experiences, this book was truly disturbing. In the best possible way. There are so many themes and possible interpretations that can be taken from this book - plenty of which I've literally written essays on - but I'll let new readers discover and interpret the book for themselves. I will issue you one warning, though: the ending is ambiguous and puts many people off the book. But, for me, it's one of the very few cases where an open ending has worked 100%. It made the story even more powerful, in my opinion, and guaranteed I would never be able to forget Offred and, indeed, this whole book.

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.”

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[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

(edited from a paper I wrote in college about the book)

In 1986, when Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale, Ronald Regan had declared “Morning in America,” and society was going to renew itself by returning to the old values. The Christian right, in its infancy at the time, was rising in reaction to the Free Love, and the horrors of AIDs. The 1984 election gave us Willie Horton, and a reminder about how violent and evil society had become. Finally, even though Chernobyl happened shortly after the book was published, the Union Carbide disaster in Bopal, India was still fresh in the headlines—a reminder that even the air is not safe. It was not hard at the time to extrapolate the ultimate end that this cocktail of fundamentalism, conservatism, violence, disease, and disaster would bring, but what Atwood could not know, is how much of her novel would become reality in the world.

Amazingly, twenty years after it was written, there are elements of the story that have become true—perhaps not in the United States, where the story takes place, but throughout the world. The most obvious first connection is with many of the issues regarding women’s rights and religious fundamentalism that are taking place in the Middle East. It was shocking to read in the book that the initial attack on the US Government was blamed on Islamic Fundamentalists, though the story was written after the Lockerbie Pan Am bombing, and the massacre at the Rome airport. While this kind of terrorism was only in its infancy, Atwood’s insight is almost prophetic in the book. When the Murrah building in Oklahoma City was bombed, the initial reaction by the media was to blame Islamic terrorists, when in fact—like the novel—the terrorism was homegrown. The scale of the attack that took out the US Government in the novel is also eerily similar to the attacks of September 11, 2001. Reading this novel in the post-9/11 world can send chills down one’s spine: the novel includes suicide bombings at checkpoints, restrictions of rights in the name of safety, blind patriotism, and an overwhelming belief that there is only one true religion, and deviants from this should be killed.

While George Orwell’s 1984 is often referred to as an insightful perspective on modern society whenever someone puts a video camera on a street lamp, or the government begins referring to negative events with positive doublespeak. Orwell’s world never materialized in full, and likely never will materialize to the degree he created. Instead it is Atwood’s distopia, seemingly outrageous at the time it was written, that became reality. This novel should serve as a cautionary warning about the result of any extremist view taken to its logical conclusion—the Taliban is proof that society cannot dismiss the notions of this book as outrageous and extreme. They have proven in the last decade, a plausible end to the error of letting fundamentalism in any form guide one’s society.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is a tale of terror as well as a warning. The dystopian future she describes in "Gilead" which appears to be centered in Boston (due to the reference to Mass Ave and the town of Salem) is chillingly misogynistic where women are reduced to strict categories: Martha for housework and cooking, Jezebels (easy to guess, right?), Eyes, Angels (soldiers for the state), infertile Wives and potentially fertile Handmaids. It is beautifully written with lots of flashbacks of "Offred",
the protagonist's name, of how things devolved into the horrors of her present. It is disturbing because it exposes the politics of reproduction and male sexuality taken to extremes of violence that are shocking and, yet, probably seemed one possible future during the Reaganite 80s when she wrote the book and now feel like the world of which Michael Pence in particular and perhaps Paul Ryan but most definitely Steve Bannon must dream. Could things so change as quickly as she describes in the book? Let us hope not. #resist

It is certainly the most explicitly feminist dystopian book I have ever read. It was thought-provoking cover to cover.

All in all, a very well-written feminist text that should serve as a clarion call for defending women's rights to maintain control over their own bodies and lives now and forever.

Just found this article about my last point: here

Drumpf's sexist, violent tweet against Morning Joe and the escalating attacks against reproductive freedom are moving the American experiment dangerously towards Atwood's Gilead. #resist

Apparently, there are also changes at the CIA that bring the spectre of Gilead a little closer. In another note, I just got Mona Eltahawy's Headscarves and Hymens which is also on subject.

Any of my review readers want to tell me whether the Hulu show about this book is worth my time or not?
[UPDATE] I have watched the first two seasons of the Hulu series and am hooked. That being said, I have watched 5 episodes of S03 and been disappointed. For those who may not know, only S01 is based on the book. The other two seasons are new writing (but with Margaret Atwood supervising the writer's room).

I am quite interested to know if anyone has already read the sequel that was just published in September 2019?
[UPDATE] The sequel The Testaments was pretty good. My review here.

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book focuses on a dystopian society where the child-bearing women are rounded up and forced to produce children for the barren Wives.

This is an interesting book with flashbacks to the "before" period, the period before Gilead. It is also very interesting to know that this book was written more than 35 years ago, but it still relevant today. Although serious, this book really gave me food for thought in more ways than one.

There are some key differences between this book and the Hulu mini-series although the series does follow the book pretty closely. Third time reading this, and I am pretty sure there will be a fourth.

2025 Reading Schedule
Jan A Town Like Alice
Feb Birdsong
Mar Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
Apr War and Peace
May The Woman in White
Jun Atonement
Jul The Shadow of the Wind
Aug Jude the Obscure
Sep Ulysses
Oct Vanity Fair
Nov A Fine Balance
Dec Germinal

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[Megan Gattone · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't even know where to start with this book??

I was not able to connect with the Characters in the book at all. It was a task to completely finish this book at all.

I know I am in the minority, but I don't know what all the hype was with this book. I think that Atwood was long winded in her writing style and did not help with the connections with the Characters.

I honestly don't have much more to say about this book.

[Ayman · Rating 5 out of 5]

the handmaid’s tale is unsettling because it feels less like fiction and more like a warning or a mirror held up to society.

read more banned books‼️

[Kevin Ansbro · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Nolite te bastardes carborundum."
(Don't let the bastards grind you down.)

Because so many of my esteemed Goodreads friends have sung in praise of this novel, I felt that I was destined to join their burgeoning ranks. Instead, I was left scratching my head, wondering if I'd even read the same book!

I was that rarity - an Atwood virgin - and I was knee-tremblingly keen to pop my cherry. I would love to say that I was enthralled and that I am now a fan, but I can't. I simply can't.
I'm not a polemicist; it pains me to do this but, aaaghh, I shall be putting my head above the parapet.

First, the positives:
The concept is venerable, following the tradition of dystopian classics, such as Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World.
This is a cautionary tale of what *might* happen were we to ignore the erosion of democratic and social freedoms, thereby enabling a right-wing Christian theocracy to take over.
The author perfectly captures the resigned bleakness of such a subjugated existence.
There were instances of genius and some moments where I could clearly see certain scenes playing out in the cinema of my mind (the illicit Scrabble games, for example).

Now, the negatives:
(Apologies to all you Atwood fans; I am actually cringing as I type this).
My read got off to an inauspicious start.
Almost immediately, I encountered a post-modernist (imagine me doing air quotes) sentence that was so-o long it straddled different time zones.
Here it is:
>>A balcony ran around the room, for the spectators, and I thought I could smell, faintly like an afterimage, the pungent scent of sweat, shot through with the sweet taint of chewing gum and perfume from the watching girls, felt-skirted as I knew from pictures, later in mini-skirts, then pants, then in one earring, spiky green-streaked hair.<<

So, please convince me, Atwood fans. Tell me honestly that this is not a clumsily-written sentence. And there are ten commas, for crying out loud! TEN. Count them!
If you arranged the little buggers together in a line, you could almost simulate the legs of a millipede!

I'm clearly of the opinion that metafiction belongs in the same orbit as conceptual art, along with the collective denial that causes people to gush over the aesthetic beauty of a pile of bricks in an art gallery. Go to a building site, I say. There's no entrance fee! : )

I so wanted to like this book. I would have loved to join the legion of Atwood devotees and be here, right now, singing her praises.
But, for me, her dictation prose is perfunctory, the similes are decidedly clunky, the syntax is dissonant, and the story just plodded along like an emphysemic tortoise. Were it not for the endorsements of my Goodreads friends rattling about in my mind, I would have abandoned it.

Despite its Chaucerian title, the book is set in an unspecified future where America has been hijacked by Christian Fundamentalists who treat enslaved fertile women as wombs on legs (an Old Testament-style version of the Taliban, I guess).
It's told in the first-person narrative, from the POV of Offred, one such fem-slave, whose sole purpose in life is to endure loveless copulation in the hope of successful fertilisation.
She remembers life before servitude and secretly wishes to be valued. "It's only the insides of our bodies that are important."

It gives me no pleasure to write this; I fully realise that I am swimming against the tide of popular opinion here. I feel like the mutinous child in Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes.
I know Margaret Atwood to be a kind, thoughtful and altruistic lady; her book is prescient and has topical relevance, but so does 1984 and Brave New World. Each is far better (in my humble opinion).

I am so sorry, Atwood addicts.
I must be missing something.

It's not you, dahhlings, it's me.

[Samadrita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Consider this not a ground-breaking work of literature. Consider this not a piece of fiction boasting an avant-garde mode of narration.
Consider it not a commentary on the concept of subjugation of the weak by the ones holding the reins. Consider it not a thinly veiled feminist diatribe either.

Instead, consider The Handmaid's Tale an almost physical experience. Consider Margaret Atwood a fearless deliverer of unpleasant news - a messenger unafraid of dishing out the bone-chilling, cruel, unaltered truth and nothing but the truth.

Move over Bram Stoker. Move over H.P. Lovecraft. Fade away into oblivion, Edgar Allan Poe. Disappear down the depths of obscurity, Stephen King. Your narratives are not nearly as coldly brutal, your premonitions not nearly as portentous.
Because Ms Atwood, presents to us something so truly disturbing in the garb of speculative fiction that it reminds one of Soviet-era accounts of quotidian hardships in Gulag labour camps.

Speculative is it?

Aren't the Offreds (Of Fred) , Ofglens (Of Glen), Of warrens (Of Warren) of Gilead equivalent to the Mrs So-and-So-s of the present, reduced to the identity of their male partners? Isn't the whittling down of a woman to the net worth of her reproductive organs and her outer appearance an accepted social more? Isn't blaming the rape victim, causing her to bear the burden of unwarranted shame and social stigma a familiar tactic employed by the defense attorney?
Hasn't the 21st century witnessed the fate of Savita Halappanavars who are led to their untimely deaths by inhumane laws of nations still unwilling to acknowledge the importance of the life of a mother over her yet unborn child?
Doesn't the 21st century have materially prosperous nations governed by absurd, archaic laws which prohibit a woman from driving a car?
Doesn't the world still take pleasure in terrorizing activists like Caroline Criado-Perez with threats of rape and murder only because they have the audacity to campaign for female literary icons (Jane Austen) to become the face of Britain's 10-pound note?
Do I not live in a country where female foeticide is as normal an occurrence as the rising and setting of the sun?

Are we still calling this speculative fiction?

Some may wish to labour under the delusion that the women belonging to this much vaunted modern civilization of ours are not experiencing the same nightmare as Offred and are at perfect liberty to do what they desire. But I will not.
Because when I look carefully, I notice shackles encircling my feet, my hands, my throat, my womb, my mind. Shackles whose presence I have become so used to since the dawn of time, that I no longer possess the ability to discern between willful submission and conditioned subservience.

But thankfully enough, I have Margaret Atwood to jolt me back into consciousness and to will me to believe that I am chained, bound and gagged. That I still need to break free.
I thank her for making me shudder with indignation, revulsion and righteous anger. I thank her for causing bile to rise up my throat.
And I thank her for forcing me to see that women of the present do live in a dystopia like Offred's United States of America. We just prefer to remain blissfully blind to this fact at times.

Disclaimer:- I mean no disrespect to the other writers mentioned in this review all of whom I have read and deeply admire.

[Tatiana · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a perfect time to be scared to death by this novel. It doesn't feel dated or far-fetched at all, thanks to President Trump.

Claire Danes is a pretty good match for this narrative.

Original review
Imagine the near future where power is overtaken by the religious right under the guise of protection from Islamic terrorism. Imagine the future where the roles of the women reduced to those assigned to them in Old Testament - they are no longer allowed to read, work, own property, or handle money. Imagine that due to the pollution and man-created viruses, the fertility rates are so low that the few fertile women (the Handmaids) are now a communal property and are moved from house to house to be inseminated by men of power under the watchful eye of their wives. Imagine the future where women can only be the Wives, domestics (the Marthas), sexual toys (the Jezebels), female prison guards (the Aunts), wombs (the Handmaids), or, if they are unsuited for any of these roles, Unwomen who are sent off to the Colonies where they harvest cotton if they are lucky or clean out radioactive waste if they aren't.

Well, after you've imagined that, you can imagine very easily how much I was terrified by this book. As a modern woman, I am horrified by the notion that at some point in time I can become nothing more than a servant, a toy, a reproductive organ. The world created by Atwood seems too much of a stretch of imagination at a first glance, but if the current climate, how implausible this feminist dystopia really is?

To say I am impressed by this novel is to say nothing, really. This book is one of those that stays in your brain and you keep coming back to it over and over again.

Having said that, I have to note, that this is definitely not an easy read. Offred (the protagonist Handmaid) is in many ways a frustrating narrator: she is broken, she is passive, she is desperate and her only goal is to make it through another day. The ending is ambiguous. The narration is complex with constant switching from present to past and back. But it all worked perfectly for me. For me, "The Handmaid's Tale" is a powerful novel that is in my mind next to Saramago's "Blindness," another book that left me sleepless.

Reading challenge: #22

[Esta · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Handmaid’s Tale—or, as we call it now, ‘The News.’

[Mario the lone bookwolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

That´s just a fictional novel if one lives in one of the privileged, rich countries. In many areas of the world, these are, a little better or worse, still the real living conditions for many women.

Flexing social sci fi muscles like no man could, at least until now.
It´s a milestone of both feministic and Sci-Fi writing, a social Sci-Fi masterpiece that goes deep under the skin and lets the reader alone after finishing the book, reflecting on society and how often circumstances like that have been and still are a reality, although most people prefer to suppress those thinkings because of the implications. And if it´s not because of the inner discomfort, there are social conventions, small talk rules, and political correctness that prohibit talking about things like female genital mutilation, killing baby girls or letting them die, and all other manifestations of patriarchy and misogyny camouflaged as ideology and faith. In civilized societies, all of these are serious crimes with felons ending in supermax prisons or institutions for the criminally insane, sadly not always forever.

Could escalate backlashing backward too
What can go unnoticed are the different increments and degrees of severity behind the fiction. That can be just a little bit of discrimination and sexism, "funny" jokes, to restrictions regarding education, sexual freedom, and contraception( especially the US is amazingly degenerating towards conservative bible belt faith fueled disenfranchisement of women )until finally, again, reaching the ideal, real stone age image of women. With polygamy and harems, no rights, infanticide, etc. Luckily still just an exaggeration, but each step backward on the sociocultural evolutionary ladder has the potential to cause chain reactions, especially if a black swan event like a global catastrophe, war, or economic meltdown lets society fall into pieces.

Divide and rule
An already fragile, cracked, and deliberately weakened foundation of emancipation, equality, and human rights, as in many US and European states thanks to crazy neoliberal Friedman fewer dreams becoming cyberpunk realities, would make it much easier to enslave females again. The poverty, suffering, and stultification generated by lacking distributional justice breed the population susceptible to demagogues and extremists making it possible.

Big history reading at schools
Once again a novel that should be reflected and discussed in schools, because many other topics, as mentioned before, could be included too. Probably in combination with Big History, to do critical analyses of the way history shaped and shapes the conditions we live in. The impact of media and trends on girls and young women, the still-unsolved problem of how to deal with domestic and sexual violence, the gender gap, the income gap, etc.

Luck and coincidence of where one is born as what
Probably one should start asking how it could come so far that little girls grow into young women who are rightless slaves in one area of the world, and conditioned to be mindless, superficial dressing dolls without any real chance against sexual harassment and less payment in so-called high developed countries, while the state is caring more about the right, political correct phrasing of male and female job descriptions and female quotas, instead of digging deeper to the ground of the problem that consists of patriarchic power structures with integrated misogyny. Just whitewashed and hidden to be in better line with corporate responsibility.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this, yuck, ugh, boo, completely overrated real-life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_His...

[Miranda Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories."

Set in the not-so-distant future, Offred is designated as a Handmaid. Meaning her fertile womb "allows" her to stay in the house of Fred as his legal consort.

(Hence the name "Of Fred" and the not-so-subtle foreshadowing "offered".)

Her alternative? Working in the radioactive wastelands (which would undoubtedly lead to her death within 2-3 years).

So, she stays on as a "handmaid" in the hopes of producing a child by Fred to be raised by him and his wife.

Once she fulfills her duties, she'd be passed on to the next man and his wife.

As a result, we are forced to read as she is systematically raped by Fred on her fertile nights.

Even she accepted it as a part of life - we see a bit of the conditioning and training (brain washing) done on new Handmaids.

It's a wonder they all weren't more screwed up.

According to the introduction, Margaret Atwood did not create any of the rules, regulations and punishments forced upon these women.

What she did was take all of the real terrors that women have suffered throughout the ages and force them to happen all at once.

Thus creating a single eye-opening dystopian novel.

This was a difficult novel to read and while I am glad to have read it once, I plan to never (never) look at it again.

"Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.
Don't let the bastards grind you down."

YouTube | Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Snapchat @miranda_reads

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.8/5 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.”

What can I even say about this masterpiece of a book? What can I even say that hasn't already been said? I'm awed to my core, this book is a prediction, a revelation, a hymn. This book is so fucking old, yet so fucking relatable and ahead of its time... it reads like 1984. The events in this dystopian book seem like such a close reality which scares me for the future of humanity.

I wanted to read this book for such a long time... but the tv show made me do it, at last. I'm so fascinated by stories like this, dystopian stories that hold truth to them, and I wanted to dive into this book with everything I had. And it happened. This book consumed me, I wanted to know everything, all the little excruciating details of this brand new world, all the thoughts in June's head, everything.

The writing was fascinating and yet sometimes I kinda lost track, especially at the dialogue parts which weren't really dialogue. The pace was a little slow, but I'm so used to YA quick pacing so I don't hold that against it. But this book was never boring or dull, it was everything it should be.

I saw some major differences with the show, the show took some characters and situations and created multiple things that didn't exist in the book. And I commend them on that. The TV show and and the book are two sides of the same coin, what lacked in the former the latter had and the opposite. One thing that let me down about the book is that we didn't see Serena and her relationship with June flourish at all. Their relationship is such a strong dynamic in the show, it is so fascinating to watch. At least we got to see it develop in the show.

I'm so irrevocably happy this story is going to continue, and so soon I've heard. We all know that came to be because of the success of the TV show, but I can't hold that against anyone because the story we are going to follow in the sequel is so much more different than season 2 of the TV show. I can't wait to again devour the next book, and I hope for many nexts. This is my first time reading a book from this author, and I don't think it will be my last.

To sum it all up, read this book. It tackles so many important issues about feminism and liberty of speech and it's even more important to read it if you're a woman. Just do it. You won't regret it. And till the next time, K BYE!!!

[Cindy Pham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea how I should rate this book. I was enraptured by the story and looked forward to reading it each time I picked it up, because the writing style and moodiness had a way of immersing me into the universe. I was very intrigued with discovering how the main character and her society ended up in these circumstances. The stale atmosphere, motonous daily life, and characters' hopeless complacence all felt very real. But I'm also dissatisfied by how much is left to the imagination due to the ambiguous ending and incomplete world building. I wanted answers to how there could be such a dramatic cultural shift in a short amount of time in one of the most liberal countries in the world — getting these answers would have helped the story be more believable and immersive. I also wish we got to follow more character development, relationship building, plot structure, or pretty much anything other than just atmospheric writing and a haunting concept. I keep juggling between rating this 3 or 4 stars, but for now I'm going to lean towards 4 stars since the book still had me more captivated compared to other novels of its time and genre, and mostly succeeded with its message and writing. I'm looking forward to checking out the TV adaptation so that I have more story to chew with.

[Fabian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A true dystopian classic. This is incredibly well written, & I think that that is why it's fan base is so enormous & faithful. It made Entertainment Weekly's "Top 25 Best Books of the Last 25 Years" several years ago.

The account reminds me of, and is probably written trying to somehow emulate, "The Diary of Anne Frank." This new vision of the future is one devoid the female mystique, with only one sex becoming triumphant &) dominating the other. This is misogyny to the nth degree. It is a holocaust that mirrors the treatment of women in the Middle East. It is multifaceted & wondrous. But also terrible.

I must say that reading the last stretch of novel, I drifted & when the conclusion arrived, it hit me. It's impact waking me full tilt. What?!?!? It ends in a very Coen Brothers fashion! That it is tight, then unravels in plot is efficient... then chaotic. It belongs in the same shelf as "We," obviously, and I did not find anything funny about it, only pathos and ironic melancholy. Again, kinda like 'em Coens.

[Lyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is a brilliant, endearing, scary as hell book.

Told with simplistic prose and stark attention to detail, Atwood describes life in the not too distant future where the United States has been transformed through military coup into a totalitarian theocracy. This dystopian horror story is made all the more real by the bridge Atwood has created between the world we know now and the world that could be – the story’s protagonist remembers the time before the change. This is, to my knowledge, a unique element in the dystopian genre, whereas in many others the setting is some time in the far future and there seems little hope for change or revolution.

More than that, the heroine, Offred (not her real name but the proprietary title she is given) is an approachable, likable character that brings the reader dangerously close to the action. Drawing an obvious correlation between far right conservative Christian movements and Muslim Sharia law authoritarian theocratic ideologies, Atwood has created a disturbing vision.

As the reader experiences the story from the perspective of a mother, this story has the added complexity of nurturing relationships turned horribly askew. This is not as terrible as Elie Wiesel’s Night, still in my mind the scariest nightmare I’ve ever even thought about reading, but Atwood’s talent has summoned a specter almost as dark.

[Simona B · Rating 2 out of 5]

EDIT 02/06/2016: Lowering the rating to two. I finished it more than a week ago and now I realized I haven't thought of it once. It really left me nothing.

"Better never means better for everyone, he says. It always means worse, for some."

I used to think of my reading taste as predictable. Well, at least a very specific part of my reading taste: namely, there are very few things in the world that I love more than I love dyostopias in the style of 1984 and, above any other, Brave New World (seriously, you need to read that book). This is why I was convinced I was bound to like The Handmaid's Tale; and yet, right before I started it, I was caught by a hunch that my certainties were not certain at all.

I don't know if it's self-conditioning or whatever, but my gut feelings lately are unerring.

•Have you ever heard of Coleridge and the suspension of disbelief?

"...a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith."

In the majority of cases, we don't even realize we're granting the author and the story our suspension of disbelief. We just believe, because we are prepared to, because we know that if we don't, then reading is no use, especially if what we are dealing with is a fantasy or sci-fi book. Lo and behold, this book made me struggle to grant it my suspension of disbelief. I still have not decided if it was due to the writing, or the story in itself, or something else yet, but that is what happened, and it totally ruined it for me.

•In my defense, the lack of explanations, or better, the fact that they are given only when we are well into the story, practically towards the end, did not help. Most of the time, I just felt like I was groping around in the dark, and honestly, it was annoying, annoying, annoying. Besides, we are supposed to believe that this full-scale change that swept across the society happened in approximately eight or ten years at most, (we don't know the chronological details) and I found I just couldn't believe it. It's too radical a transformation, and according to the book the mentality it brought about is already well-implanted into the citizens -not everyone, naturally, but generally it is. It's par for the course for a dictatorship to establish itself in a matter of years, but it requires nonetheless the long-standing presence of a certain set of ideas that justifies and forms the basis of the building of an ideology. What we see in The Handmaid's Tale is the cause, the ultimate effect, and none of the passages in between. I need the in-between. I need the whole picture.

•This lack of "background", if you can call it so, made it impossible for me to lose myself int he story. The narrative voice, the protagonist's, is ineffective, bland, not nearly as trenchant as such a strong story requires. She should be able to heighten our disgust for the situation out of sympathy towards her and her circumstances, but to me, and you are allowed to call me heartless, nothing of this happened. I was horrified by what she and the whole female population have to suffer, but it was only an objective aversion due to an objective state of affairs, and not even partly to the empathy I should have felt for the character. I read stories to connect with the people in them; otherwise, I would read nonfiction.

•The plot is uneventful, almost literally. Usually this is not something I consider a priori as a flaw, but in this case it felt like one.

➽ On balance, I did not enjoy it. I acknowledge its value, but it was quite an effort for me to get through it.
Now that I think of it, probably it's kind of a 2.5 instead of a full 3.

[Leonard Gaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ironically, Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale around 1984. Indeed, it is commonly known that her novel depicts an Orwellian dystopia, as seen through the eyes of Offred, a handmaid. This term should not be understood in the ordinary meaning of the word (i.e., a domestic worker), but in the biblical sense, cf. the tale of Hagar (Genesis, chap. 16) or Zilpah and Bilhah (Genesis, chap. 29 sqq.). The novel contains many such subtle biblical references (Gilead, Jezebel). The handmaid, then, is a slave-woman with a gestational surrogacy role, whose sole value is her uterus. Offred’s story takes place in an authoritarian society — the U.S. turned into a totalitarian regime, where infertility is widespread, and men have the upper hand. In a nutshell: a nightmarish theocracy.

Every event in the story is seen through Offred’s eyes. Her claustrophobic world, her oppressive routine, everything in her life is fastidiously described in the form of a diary or stream of consciousness: the household, the neighborhood around the house, the people she carefully meets, her room, her dreams, her recollection of how she came to be there… Then, around the middle of the novel, some small changes (often sexually loaded) start to take place and slowly build up until, eventually, her horrific environment starts to crumble. The ending is somewhat abrupt.

Margaret Atwood’s major tour de force is indeed to make the reader dive right into the character’s perspective, without the expected exposition that would explain what this “sci-fi” world is about and how it came to be this way. In fact, all the explanatory parts are pushed back at the end of the book, in the surprising metafictional keynote entitled Historical Notes — a narrative device Atwood borrowed from 1984’s Appendix. In so doing, we are left somewhat clueless, guessing at every page. In so doing, the author manages, with a remarkable economy of means, a neutral voice, a lack of spectacular effects, to build an incredible sense of tension and anxiety.

In the end, Atwood's representation of an iron-fisted, misogynistic world is so appalling that it seems implausible and revolting. Yet, the author has repeatedly stressed that, as a self-imposed rule, she has refused to make up any of the details in her work. Every injustice, every abuse, every pain inflicted on women actually took place (and sadly still does) at some point or other of human history.

Edit: The Hulu TV show, based on Atwood’s barbaric dystopia, is a graphic, breathtaking, and incredibly absorbing adaptation. This is thanks to the excellent actors’ performance and the Bergmanian style of the film, which (as far as the first season goes) remains faithful to the novel while expanding on the plot and characters. The use of explanatory flashbacks dispels most of the confusion the audience might have had while reading the book; yet confusion is at the very heart of Atwood’s work. The following seasons further elaborate on the plot, beyond the boundaries of the novel. The Testaments is Atwood’s own sequel to her book, written more than thirty years later.

[Always Pouting · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt kind of slow last night so I didn't want to keep reading my nonfiction book and I started this instead. I think though that was a slight mistake because I did feel like I missed things when reading this and went back a few times to reread sentences. I'm mentioning that to say I really liked how well written it felt and the writing style itself was really appealing to me. I like when writing is a little vague and disconnected, I really enjoy the stream of consciousness type of narration when its done well a lot.

The premise of the book was also really unique and the book did a really good job keep me engaged. I was kind of bummed we never find out what happens to the main character though and I'm not sure how I felt about that ending. I know it's supposed to imply that things eventually became more normal over time but it was hard to know. I might also have felt that way because like I said I was kind of slow last night and had trouble concentrating. I do think it was a good choice to never tell us the name of the main character though, that really went well with the tone of the book. All in all I really enjoyed this one, this was 4.5 stars for me.

[Candace · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading 'The Handmaid's Tale', I can see why this dystopian classic has made such an impression on so many. This is a book that definitely hangs with you, haunting your thoughts, long after you finish the book. It is thought-provoking and terrifying.

The story centers on the heroine, Offred, who is a "handmaiden" in this futuristic world created by Ms. Atwood. As a handmaiden, Offred's sole purpose is to produce a baby for the Commander and his wife, Serena Joy. Once she has served her purpose, she will be reassigned to another high-ranking man for the same purpose. This pattern will repeat over and over, until she is no longer able to bear children. What happens then, nobody really wants to talk about. Worse yet, if she fails to produce a child then she will face a fate reserved for the lowliest of women.

This is the world that Offred and others are left with after a brutal civil war stamped out the rights that citizens like Offred had taken for granted. The overthrow of the democratic government was gradual...until it wasn't. The changes that took place were very insidious.

One moment, people like Offred were consumed with trivial problems, like where they were going to go out for dinner that night. The next thing they knew, a civil war was raging. Soon, their every movement was monitored closely. Of course, this was for their own "protection" and "safety". Then, women weren't allowed to hold jobs or manage their own money. (After all, the poor little dears shouldn't have to bear that burden. A man should handle those sorts of things.) Next, anyone that dared to oppose the new regime was eliminated. Before long, citizens like Offred cannot even recognize their new reality. They are stuck under the rule of an incredibly oppressive, misogynistic regime.

Worst of all, their complacency paved the way for this gradual overthrow. Little by little, they handed over their rights with little resistance. They refused to see the writing on the wall and wanted to believe the lies that they were spoon-fed. Once they wised up, it was too late. Now, they are a people broken. Women, especially, face a grim fate.

This book is remarkable! Although it can be rather slow-moving at times, the message was powerful. This story serves as a cautionary tale and a necessary reminder. Civil rights are hard won and easily lost.

It is easy to draw comparisons to many of this books' events and the events of the past and present. Ms. Atwood highlights many important issues and offers a great deal of social commentary. There were so many important topics that she touched upon that I can't even begin to list them.

This book is considered to be a classic for a reason. It is a book that needs to be read and taken in by readers. While it isn't necessarily the most entertaining read, it is certainly one of the most enlightening and thought-provoking. I highly recommend that everyone read this book, at least once.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrifying! But SO good!

Update in Year One ... No .... It's Already Year Two ... Terrible Two ... Of Dystopia:

As long as you are allowed and capable to read, please do read this novel! In an era when politicians in the Western world are not ashamed to refer to pregnant women as "hosts", deprived of their rights as individuals, we must start speaking up against the steady realisation of dystopian fiction. Let these authors, such as Orwell, Atwood, or Ishiguro, stay great writers of fiction! Don't make them involuntary prophets!

If we don't oppose the hypocrisy and illogical idiocy of lawmaking against women's choice regarding unwanted pregnancy, claiming that it is based on moral and religious grounds, we will have a society ruled by 17th century Puritans with an evil modern twist.

"Thou shalt not kill!" I agree. Let's start implementing that commandment where people are actually dying.

I am Pro Life: Let's work to put an end to the distribution and availability of weapons, the death penalty, and wars. Let's speak up for better health care to protect the lives of millions of human beings. Let's support refugees from other parts of the world that are threatened by war or famines or disease. Let's focus on the big issues that threaten life on earth! Let's care for our environment. Pro Life!

Update a couple of months into Year One Of Dystopia:

I just listened to an interview with a conservative Catholic politician in the UK who believes so much in the teachings of the Catholic Church that he thinks it is morally indefensible for a woman raped by a family member to have an abortion. Where is the novelist who can write a science fiction story about him waking up in hell after death and realising that Catholicism was not the absolute truth after all, but Hinduism. He receives the message that his next incarnation on Earth will be a young Catholic girl raped by a priest. Oh karma!

In Year Two of Dystopia we still quote the bible both to justify forbidding abortion AND to cause massive trauma to babies born on the wrong side of a border. Pro Life, anyone? Pro children?

Pro human beings? We are moving into Gilead, and it is no fun. I had intended to post news about misogyny in the Western world here regularly, to point out the incredible importance of this book regularly, but the sheer mass of reports makes it impossible. Today's harvest, among other things: 100,000 Christians subscribe to try to prevent US libraries from supporting a Drag Queen Story Time, bizarrely claiming it would "teach boys to become drag queens"! How long will we have to listen to that bullshit? Sorry for the expletive, but I am angry, really angry. If one could choose one's sexuality, I think many, many women who are victims of domestic rape would choose to be gay to escape toxic masculinity once and for all, but unfortunately, that is not how it works. Otherwise I would like to re-educate all patriarchs to a different sexual orientation, as theirs is by far the one that harms society most.

I can't wait to see what happens to Offred next, but I sense a gloomy sequel... The Testaments will tell.

[Baba · Rating 5 out of 5]

An ultra male chauvinist, racist, nativist, mono-theocratic organised military coup is the extreme ideologically-driven response to the pervasive ecological, physical and social degradation of an alternate USA in the 20th century; this is the rambling diary of a surrogate slave breeder (a 'handmaiden') of the era. Thought provoking as much as it is disturbing as it so feels very much like the dream aspirational reality that would be very much welcomed by most of the religious far-Right in America today!

Due to its surge in popularity in light of the TV show and then the book sequel, I thought a reread was due before I myself pick up the sequel. Let's talk about the writing! This story is set in a modern not too far in time America(!) and that things have got really bad, and now in 2023 I can see that this is the end-game of a Trump America! What Atwood does so well in this book; is using an unreliable narrator recalling her past, living under such an extreme regime, because it adds another layer to the read. In addition, every twist and turn of her experiences are only revealed as and when she recalls it, which results in almost every few pages, pages of insight, of shock, and awe of the sublimely dark creativity - slash - horror. It's a shame that in time the TV series may come to overshadow the book in culture, but what a book it is; alongside the innovative ideas, the looking-back-in-time PTSD suffering unreliable narrator, the multi-faceted characterisations of both 'good and 'bad people', the twisted alternate history concepts etc. it is wonderfully written, and yet another Margaret Atwood masterclass in storytelling. 10 out of 12. Five Star read.

2023, 2019 and 2010 read

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book to read right now for a couple of reasons. One, I just finished 1984 and it was very much a world like the one in 1984. Two, the storyline closely reflects the fears of the current political climate in America.

It is hard to say that a story like this is "great" as that has a positive connotation. I was very enthralling, but terrifying at the same time. As a man, I don't think this story has as deep of an impact on me as it would if I was a woman.

If you like dystopian, you must check this book out. If you are fired up by the recent election, you may want to hold off a bit . . . it will only make it worse.

[Jen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is about observations. A lot of really boring observations.

[Matthias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't let the bastards grind you down.

There's a lot of talk about women's rights these days. There were times where I thought: enough already. You girls got it good. I looked around me and saw women with strong voices and a million choices. If they wished to go for a career, they could go for it. If they didn't, no biggie. Their liberty seemed greater than men's in a lot of respects. The power they wield over men is magnificent and often described as the greatest humanity is capable of: a woman's love. They can choose to give it or withhold it. Men's political and physical powers look puny and artificial in contrast, as their strings are constantly pulled by forces they can't resist. Somewhere deep inside me I had a hard time believing things could really be so bad for women, with their majority in numbers and all this strenght at their disposal.

But then you turn on the news or you open a history book. You look outside your own country. You look at a presidential candidate talking about women as animals, as goods to be acquired, as territories to be conquered. You see people making excuses for it, making light of it, you see in their eyes they assume that it's normal. You see laws that tell women what to do with their own bodies, in the name of religion or the greater good. You hear of households where tiny kings use their physical power to terrorise their tiny kingdoms. And then you see all the machinations that have gone into trying to rob women of their mystical, almost holy, powers in greater kingdoms, machinations that often seem on the verge of systematising in the blink of an eye.

So, having accepted that the Woman's struggle is real, I was reading The Handmaid's Tale that paints a picture of how things would look like if circumstance and evil succeeded in stripping women of all the agency they have. When they have succesfully been ground down by the bastards. Bastards aren't Men, per se. Or all men. Or only men. This isn't so much a story about women versus men. It's a story of the artificial power against the real one, a story where the former won.

It's a bleak picture. Atwood uses the very claustrophobic perspective of Offred to great effect. Offred is the eponymous handmaid who find herself in a dystopia where her only societal value is also a curse: her fertility. Her world consists of her room, a stroll down the stairs, a garden, a walk to the butcher and her one and only societal mission: to get pregnant. She has to wear a cape that allows her to only look directly in front of her. She's isolated and stripped of her identity. Even her memories are slowly disappearing and losing relevance in a surrounding that offers nothing to link them to. Through this narrative Margaret Atwood succeeds in donning that same vision-confining cape on her readers' heads, immersing them in that same claustrophobic atmosphere.

This books does very well what it set out to do and that also explains why I didn't thoroughly enjoy it. I wanted more background. I wanted more explanations. I wanted more adventure. I wanted more action by the protagonist. I wanted her spirit, still apparent in the secretly hoarding of butter and the plotting of small thefts, to break free and wreak havoc among the bastards. Make them lose without losing herself. I wanted more direction. I wanted the flashes of hope to last. In short: the author succeeded in making me want what the protagonist wanted. She showed me what it is we should all strive to avoid actively.

An important book, and a good one to boot.