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The Handmaid’s Tale #1-2
The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments Box Set
A box set of Margaret Atwood's bestselling companioned novels, The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments.In The Handmaid's Tale, environmental disasters and declining birthrates have led to a Second American Civil War and the rise of the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian regime that enforces rigid social roles and enslaves the few remaining fertile women. Offred is one of these, a Handmaid bound to produce children for one of Gilead's Commanders. Deprived of her husband, her child, her freedom, and even her own name, Offred clings to her memories and her will to survive. In The Testaments, set more than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the Republic of Gilead maintains its repressive grip on power, but it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women come together, with potentially explosive results. This beautifully designed slipcase will make the perfect holiday and perennial gift.
Paperback
Published October 20, 2020
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About the author
Margaret Atwood
669 books89.9k followersMargaret 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
June 19, 2022
The Handmaid’s Tale:
With civilization in turmoil due to environmental catastrophes and a steady decline in human birthrates, the United States has suffered through a Second Civil War. The aftermath of this conflict has resulted in America devolving into the Republic of Gilead governed by a barbaric regime. Women no longer have any rights, making them chattel subjected for the sole purpose of fertility, at least the few who can still carry a child to term. Those unable to conceive are deemed expendable, just like any other woman or man who serves no benefit to the regime.
Atwood’s frightening and alarming novel is a marvel of imagination. Her clairvoyance is ingenious in its ominous vision of the future and also terrifying in its relevance at this present moment in 2022, where we see megalomaniacs in America and around the world wanting to seize power by utilizing misinformation, cruelty, and violence to install totalitarian and fascist regimes. Although everything about the fictional nation of Gilead is shocking and appalling, its dystopian existence is Atwood’s concerned attempt to portray the consequences of human injustice and madness.
Apart from this insanity, the novel’s narrator—who has been renamed “Offred” from her real name which is never disclosed—preserves her insider account of the inhumanity unfolding in Gilead. At risk of her own survival, Offred’s courage to write The Handmaid’s Tale is the thread of hope we need to embrace from this stark and disturbing novel. For this reason, I am in awe of Atwood’s work and rank it among some of the most vital pieces of contemporary literature I’ve read, right there beside Morrison’s Beloved and McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.
The Handmaid’s Tale has the gripping quality of a thriller, yet its suspense demands slower reading to grasp the totality of its satirical undertones. The story generates a degree of chilling intensity and urgency that is almost unbearable. I found Atwood’s extraordinary prose so poetic as to sound almost Biblical or Qur’anic in its brevity and directness to deliver its message of truth. The novel ultimately serves as a premonition for us to steer away from the madness of human indignity and towards promising ourselves we must never regress and descend into a society with a government capable of the most brutal treatment of its citizens.
The Testaments:
After warning the world with The Handmaid’s Tale and its terrifying clairvoyance of a future where totalitarian regimes declare women as subservient to men, Atwood revisits the dystopian Republic of Gilead in her equally ominous and riveting novel The Testaments. She begins her sequel fifteen years after the chilling end of events from the first book, and she presents three narrators who share testimonies that include long-awaited answers to what’s happening inside and outside of Gilead.
The ruthless Aunt Lydia from The Handmaid’s Tale returns with a narrative that divulges secrets about the unchecked corruption and inhumanity causing fractures in stability among the top Gilead commanders. Then there is the voice of Agnes, a young woman born and growing up in Gilead, who provides her experiences of the horrors multiplying within Gilead. And the third narrator is Daisy, a young girl whose names and identities change throughout the novel. She offers insight about the resistance movement within Canada against Gilead.
The novel has the page-turning and heart-pounding quality of a thriller, much like The Handmaid’s Tale, except that The Testaments reads with much more rapid pacing and anticipation. As the three women chronicle their sacrifices and courage, the suspense amplifies with each of their stories headed for intersection. Atwood merges their narratives in gripping fashion while she also allows their identities and fates to reveal unanswered secrets from The Handmaid’s Tale.
With the novel having three distinct narrators, Atwood employs language unique to each voice, and so The Testaments does not seek to match the bedazzling poetic degree she achieved in The Handmaid’s Tale. Regardless of the prose style, the sequel is every bit as intense and unforgettable as the first book. What becomes abundantly clear with the ending of The Testaments is that Atwood wants to deliver a resounding message: that the evil of Gilead implodes due to its own unsustainability of endless cruelty, violence, and inhumanity.
As a collective narrative that is best served if read in order, both The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments do not wince in the face of their dark and disturbing subject matter. In opposition to the insanity depicted throughout the series, each novel offers hope because it warns against an imaginary barbaric world that does not and must never exist. With that said, it is most frightening in 2022 to watch how madmen in America and around the world proliferate their proud and unconcealed racism and white patriarchal supremacy to radicalize a society where they proclaim only a select few are worthy of belonging at the expense of all others.
With civilization in turmoil due to environmental catastrophes and a steady decline in human birthrates, the United States has suffered through a Second Civil War. The aftermath of this conflict has resulted in America devolving into the Republic of Gilead governed by a barbaric regime. Women no longer have any rights, making them chattel subjected for the sole purpose of fertility, at least the few who can still carry a child to term. Those unable to conceive are deemed expendable, just like any other woman or man who serves no benefit to the regime.
Atwood’s frightening and alarming novel is a marvel of imagination. Her clairvoyance is ingenious in its ominous vision of the future and also terrifying in its relevance at this present moment in 2022, where we see megalomaniacs in America and around the world wanting to seize power by utilizing misinformation, cruelty, and violence to install totalitarian and fascist regimes. Although everything about the fictional nation of Gilead is shocking and appalling, its dystopian existence is Atwood’s concerned attempt to portray the consequences of human injustice and madness.
Apart from this insanity, the novel’s narrator—who has been renamed “Offred” from her real name which is never disclosed—preserves her insider account of the inhumanity unfolding in Gilead. At risk of her own survival, Offred’s courage to write The Handmaid’s Tale is the thread of hope we need to embrace from this stark and disturbing novel. For this reason, I am in awe of Atwood’s work and rank it among some of the most vital pieces of contemporary literature I’ve read, right there beside Morrison’s Beloved and McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.
The Handmaid’s Tale has the gripping quality of a thriller, yet its suspense demands slower reading to grasp the totality of its satirical undertones. The story generates a degree of chilling intensity and urgency that is almost unbearable. I found Atwood’s extraordinary prose so poetic as to sound almost Biblical or Qur’anic in its brevity and directness to deliver its message of truth. The novel ultimately serves as a premonition for us to steer away from the madness of human indignity and towards promising ourselves we must never regress and descend into a society with a government capable of the most brutal treatment of its citizens.
The Testaments:
After warning the world with The Handmaid’s Tale and its terrifying clairvoyance of a future where totalitarian regimes declare women as subservient to men, Atwood revisits the dystopian Republic of Gilead in her equally ominous and riveting novel The Testaments. She begins her sequel fifteen years after the chilling end of events from the first book, and she presents three narrators who share testimonies that include long-awaited answers to what’s happening inside and outside of Gilead.
The ruthless Aunt Lydia from The Handmaid’s Tale returns with a narrative that divulges secrets about the unchecked corruption and inhumanity causing fractures in stability among the top Gilead commanders. Then there is the voice of Agnes, a young woman born and growing up in Gilead, who provides her experiences of the horrors multiplying within Gilead. And the third narrator is Daisy, a young girl whose names and identities change throughout the novel. She offers insight about the resistance movement within Canada against Gilead.
The novel has the page-turning and heart-pounding quality of a thriller, much like The Handmaid’s Tale, except that The Testaments reads with much more rapid pacing and anticipation. As the three women chronicle their sacrifices and courage, the suspense amplifies with each of their stories headed for intersection. Atwood merges their narratives in gripping fashion while she also allows their identities and fates to reveal unanswered secrets from The Handmaid’s Tale.
With the novel having three distinct narrators, Atwood employs language unique to each voice, and so The Testaments does not seek to match the bedazzling poetic degree she achieved in The Handmaid’s Tale. Regardless of the prose style, the sequel is every bit as intense and unforgettable as the first book. What becomes abundantly clear with the ending of The Testaments is that Atwood wants to deliver a resounding message: that the evil of Gilead implodes due to its own unsustainability of endless cruelty, violence, and inhumanity.
As a collective narrative that is best served if read in order, both The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments do not wince in the face of their dark and disturbing subject matter. In opposition to the insanity depicted throughout the series, each novel offers hope because it warns against an imaginary barbaric world that does not and must never exist. With that said, it is most frightening in 2022 to watch how madmen in America and around the world proliferate their proud and unconcealed racism and white patriarchal supremacy to radicalize a society where they proclaim only a select few are worthy of belonging at the expense of all others.
January 4, 2020
The Testaments is an absolutely wonderful follow up to The Handmaids Tale. Loved Aunt Lydia’s viewpoint.
April 8, 2024
If you'd think of the worst-case scenarios that could happen in the future, this is it. Just reading the book and watching the screen adaptation, it is a nightmare. This imaginative and unprecedented take on an anti-feminist dystopian world is a revelation and a warning on what could be one of the million possible futures this world would ever be and have.
Set on a time of chaos and confusion, in the Gilead Republic which replaces the United States as an answer to its economic downfall and low birthrates. Commanding all women of fertile age to be Handmaids to a sterile Wife of a Commander. Recreating the biblical story of Rachel and Leah as sisterwives of Jacob in which Rachel is not able to bear a child thus making their handmaid, Bilhah, be pregnant with their husband, Jacob. Handmaids are therefore the most important members of the household and yet the most abused.
The main handmaid in this story is Offred, taken from their Commander, named Fred and his wife, Serena Joy. They meet in a scheduled time regularly called the Ceremony, which is the ritualized sexual act with the Commander, while the Handmaid is laying down in between the legs of the Wife. (Ain't that the most absurd thing ever) However, the handmaid has to fulfill her obligation of being pregnant or else be castrated. The book also follows the life before the invasion where Offred was a career woman, building a life as a mother, wife and career woman. One day, women are no longer able to own property, their credit cards discontinued, just their basic rights revoked. Just as things get violent, Offred with her daughter and husband were trying to escape, she and her daughter were captured and then got separated, leaving Offred unaware of where they were taking her also with the fate of her husband, Luke. She also has to find out where her bestfriend is Moira who is then taken in as a handmaid but was then able to escape. Women were segregated into sanctions as per their status prior to the change. They have no access to books, their meals are prepared, they wear a red dress and white caps as uniforms designating you as a handmaid. On shopping day, they walk in pairs, with covers on their eyes. With this, she comes to know more of her partner, Ofglen, who in which we discovered is part of the revolution. Then comes, the Aunts, higher ranking women in Gilead who practically designates a woman's fate in the republic. Aunt Lydia, the most powerful, is the most villainous in this book on which her true destiny was later revealed in The Testaments.
The Testaments, the sequel of The Handmaid's Tale, reveals the answers of the unanswered questions of the first book. The stories of the women surrounding Gilead and the repercussions of its atrocities. It introduces us to the Pearl Girls, created by the Aunts in pursuit of the Revolution, called Mayday. It brings us Nicole and Agnes, who will later on, help redeem the freedom the people, most especially, the women needed.
This story is depressing as it is stirring. It is jarring but you just can't look away. For sure, not an easy read. It lets out a feeling of discomfort and disgust. A sobering feeling most especially being read by a woman in these times. The author, Margaret Atwood, has created characters and situations so ominous and foreboding that serves either a juxtaposition or a (knock on wood) mirror image on what could be the climate of women's rights and lifestyle. The patriarchy and the complicity of these scenarios could just be fair warning on what could be a sad and desolate world one day and hopefully not, world we could be living in.
Set on a time of chaos and confusion, in the Gilead Republic which replaces the United States as an answer to its economic downfall and low birthrates. Commanding all women of fertile age to be Handmaids to a sterile Wife of a Commander. Recreating the biblical story of Rachel and Leah as sisterwives of Jacob in which Rachel is not able to bear a child thus making their handmaid, Bilhah, be pregnant with their husband, Jacob. Handmaids are therefore the most important members of the household and yet the most abused.
The main handmaid in this story is Offred, taken from their Commander, named Fred and his wife, Serena Joy. They meet in a scheduled time regularly called the Ceremony, which is the ritualized sexual act with the Commander, while the Handmaid is laying down in between the legs of the Wife. (Ain't that the most absurd thing ever) However, the handmaid has to fulfill her obligation of being pregnant or else be castrated. The book also follows the life before the invasion where Offred was a career woman, building a life as a mother, wife and career woman. One day, women are no longer able to own property, their credit cards discontinued, just their basic rights revoked. Just as things get violent, Offred with her daughter and husband were trying to escape, she and her daughter were captured and then got separated, leaving Offred unaware of where they were taking her also with the fate of her husband, Luke. She also has to find out where her bestfriend is Moira who is then taken in as a handmaid but was then able to escape. Women were segregated into sanctions as per their status prior to the change. They have no access to books, their meals are prepared, they wear a red dress and white caps as uniforms designating you as a handmaid. On shopping day, they walk in pairs, with covers on their eyes. With this, she comes to know more of her partner, Ofglen, who in which we discovered is part of the revolution. Then comes, the Aunts, higher ranking women in Gilead who practically designates a woman's fate in the republic. Aunt Lydia, the most powerful, is the most villainous in this book on which her true destiny was later revealed in The Testaments.
The Testaments, the sequel of The Handmaid's Tale, reveals the answers of the unanswered questions of the first book. The stories of the women surrounding Gilead and the repercussions of its atrocities. It introduces us to the Pearl Girls, created by the Aunts in pursuit of the Revolution, called Mayday. It brings us Nicole and Agnes, who will later on, help redeem the freedom the people, most especially, the women needed.
This story is depressing as it is stirring. It is jarring but you just can't look away. For sure, not an easy read. It lets out a feeling of discomfort and disgust. A sobering feeling most especially being read by a woman in these times. The author, Margaret Atwood, has created characters and situations so ominous and foreboding that serves either a juxtaposition or a (knock on wood) mirror image on what could be the climate of women's rights and lifestyle. The patriarchy and the complicity of these scenarios could just be fair warning on what could be a sad and desolate world one day and hopefully not, world we could be living in.
March 16, 2022
Handmaid's Tale is a timeless novel that forces readers of all ages to examine the society they live in, and the direction it could head. Handmaid’s Tale takes place in Gilead, which is a patriarchal society in what used to be America. The book tells of the swift transformation from an idealistic country centered on equality and justice to an authoritarian country where women have been stripped of all their autonomy and freedom, reminding all readers of the fragile world they live in. In Gilead, infertility has taken root, and only a select few can still bear children. These women were rounded up and placed in wealthy homes in hopes that the “best” of society can reproduce. These are the Handmaids. The other 2 classes of women are the Wives and the Marthas. Wives are the upper class women married to powerful men. Marthas, where most women find themselves, are the servants. The book follows Offred, who’s real name is never revealed. She is a handmaid for a very powerful family, and thus, the reader is keyed into both her life and the general state of Gilead.
The plot and pretense of this book is incredibly captivating, but the writing and symbolism within it also shines through. Gilead headquarters are in Cambridge, and “criminals,” are hung publicly on the walls of Harvard. The “criminals” are often people who were seeking out knowledge or who were doctors in the old world. Harvard is an institution that symbolizes discovery, curiosity, knowledge, and science. By hanging people who were seeking knowledge on the wall of Harvard, Atwood is juxtaposing Gilead and the old America, showing just how quickly and drastically things have changed. The weather in Gilead is always gloomy. It is always rainy, cloudy, or cold. This reflects the mood of the majority of people in Gilead. Atwood also sets the mood and tone of her book through the information she does provide to her readers, and more importantly, the things she doesn’t. By never revealing Offred's real name, the fate of most characters, and even the true ending of Offred’s story, Atwood forces all readers into the reality of having gaping holes in reality and not being able to do anything about it. This helplessness and sense of being in the dark is how all of the women in Gilead feel, and by forcing the reader to feel this as well, Atwood guarantees that Handmaid’s Tale is a timeless story that is extremely impactful for anyone who reads it.
The plot and pretense of this book is incredibly captivating, but the writing and symbolism within it also shines through. Gilead headquarters are in Cambridge, and “criminals,” are hung publicly on the walls of Harvard. The “criminals” are often people who were seeking out knowledge or who were doctors in the old world. Harvard is an institution that symbolizes discovery, curiosity, knowledge, and science. By hanging people who were seeking knowledge on the wall of Harvard, Atwood is juxtaposing Gilead and the old America, showing just how quickly and drastically things have changed. The weather in Gilead is always gloomy. It is always rainy, cloudy, or cold. This reflects the mood of the majority of people in Gilead. Atwood also sets the mood and tone of her book through the information she does provide to her readers, and more importantly, the things she doesn’t. By never revealing Offred's real name, the fate of most characters, and even the true ending of Offred’s story, Atwood forces all readers into the reality of having gaping holes in reality and not being able to do anything about it. This helplessness and sense of being in the dark is how all of the women in Gilead feel, and by forcing the reader to feel this as well, Atwood guarantees that Handmaid’s Tale is a timeless story that is extremely impactful for anyone who reads it.
November 24, 2025
Four and a half stars. The Handmaid's Tale got five stars from me back when I first read it, and to me that rating holds up. I don't class it as horror, and yet in many ways it reads more like a horror book than a science fiction one, precisely because it's so frighteningly plausible. The collapse of women's rights in an it-can't-happen-here society, and the women who go along with and support this fundamental betrayal, is fascinating. Horrifying, as I said, but fascinating. I didn't like The Testaments as much; it only got four stars from me (hence the collected average). While I did enjoy the sense of hope and the beginnings of the fall of Gilead, it lacked the real visceral sense of dread and disgust that the first book did, I think.
August 2, 2023
HMT is one of my all-time favorites, and I was afraid to read the Testaments, given that sequels are often a let down and the length of time that had passed since the original was written (34 years). I That said, the Testaments is the rare sequel that meets (or possibly even exceeds) the original. The scope of the book is very broad, going back in time to before the events of the HMT and then ending long after the HMT events. The plot was strong, and the main characters are very compelling. Interesting choice making one of the main villains of HMT one of the primary protaganists of the sequel. Overall, I wanted to read the book straight through!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 2, 2023
Read again and again
March 30, 2023
I loved this book, it absolutely terrified me at the same time and feels far too close to home as if something like this could happen at any time. Brilliantly written.
August 1, 2023
On The Testaments
- Yes, this is the sequel
- You still go, girls
- Gilead from the inside
- The Hunger Games with Orphan Black
- Yes, this is the sequel
- You still go, girls
- Gilead from the inside
- The Hunger Games with Orphan Black
Read
September 15, 2023Reread the classic. Stands the test of time.
December 27, 2023
Essential reading if you believe a canadian feminist could possibly have developed enough brainpower to write anything intelligent or useful
March 28, 2024
Absolutely loved this sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. Listened to the audio version and to have Aunt Lydia's viewpoint spoken by Ann Dowd was an absolute joy
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 18, 2023
You should read or watch HMT first in order to know the background and to appreciate The Testaments.
July 18, 2025
Great two book series that looks into the fictional future of women's roll in society.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 29, 2020
I got the box set and finished the first novel, The Handmaid's Tale today. I shall start with the 2nd book, The Testaments, now.
The first novel, written around 1985, was satisfactory. I am a bit disappointed, was hoping for more, but it is not easy to write a good dystopian novel; and overall the lecture was easy and the story catchy enough.
Offred - the main character - is a handmaid in the dystopian society of Gilead. She used to be a working woman in the old World, a mother and a wife. But that old life she is having difficulty at times trying to remember, brain washed and stressed out in the new Order.
Her mission is to procreate, to give birth to healthy babies (if possible). Gilead is a society with low natality and an aging, and depleted, population. Wars, purges, toxins in the ecosystem and other causes forced the despotic regime to take action. The women in the society are second class citizens who still have first class missions.
There are the Handmaids, who lend their bodies to the powerful Commanders (leaders of the Republic - those who have no children). It's not their will, but they have to do it (to avoid being sent to the colonies). This group is The Reds.
Their bosses, the Wives (who could not provide their spouses with the coveted babies) are allowed to beat them but cannot kill them. The Wives (dressed in blue) are a privileged class of their own, as companions of the Commanders.
There are also The Econowives, striped red, blue and green dresses, the women of poorer men, who can not afford Marthas and have to do everything themselves.
Speaking of, we got the Marthas, elder women who work in the affluent household, doing the daily chores. This group of house servants considers itself lucky, since most of the elders end up digging into radioactive garbage in the Colonies, with poor food and a 3 to 5 years life expectancy.
Finally, we got the group of Aunts, doctrine teachers responsible with the brainwashing of their charges, The Handmaids. These half gurus half guardians take the young women of the old USA and transform them into passive and cooperating bodies. All is kept simple, handmaids don't need to read or write, or to think much about anything other than getting pregnant.
The Aunts too, just like the Wives, are the canary in a golden cage. Maybe powerful towards the girls, but lacking any power in the society.
Every woman is a body, an asset with a clear job/mission.
The plot is fairly straightforward. Offred (potentially June in her previous life) is captured while trying to exit Gilead, at the border with Canada. She didn't know what happened to her husband Luke and her daughter, but later in the novel she's shown a picture of her daughter, she appears to be alive and grown up. In exchange for living within the mainstream society, she has to accept to become a Handmaid, a body for rent, a surrogate mother. She is assigned to two households, after the proper training and brainwashing, but she does not get pregnant. The novel starts with her into her third (final) rotation, at the house of Commander Fred Waterford (hence her name, Offred - play on words .... Handmaids don't have full names, but rather just one name indicating to whom they belong).
Offred ends up running away, in a staged exit from the Commander's household that is orchestrated by her clandestine lover, Nick (also the Commander's personal driver/front man). As everyone is obsessed with babies in Gilead, we are allowed to believe that Nick acted on behalf of a potential pregnancy (Offred mentioned this possibility to him one night).
The Handmaid's Tale is one of the major Atwood novels. It won the GG Award for fiction in 1985, the Arthur C. Clarke Award (SF) in 1987 and the Commonwealth Literature Prize; and was nominated for the Booker Prize and the Nebula Award (both in 1986). Atwood herself, for her entire body of work, won the PEN Lifetime Achievement Award and several other lifetime recognition awards.
Looking forward to read the sequel, The Testaments, which Atwood wrote way later, in 2019.
The first novel, written around 1985, was satisfactory. I am a bit disappointed, was hoping for more, but it is not easy to write a good dystopian novel; and overall the lecture was easy and the story catchy enough.
Offred - the main character - is a handmaid in the dystopian society of Gilead. She used to be a working woman in the old World, a mother and a wife. But that old life she is having difficulty at times trying to remember, brain washed and stressed out in the new Order.
Her mission is to procreate, to give birth to healthy babies (if possible). Gilead is a society with low natality and an aging, and depleted, population. Wars, purges, toxins in the ecosystem and other causes forced the despotic regime to take action. The women in the society are second class citizens who still have first class missions.
There are the Handmaids, who lend their bodies to the powerful Commanders (leaders of the Republic - those who have no children). It's not their will, but they have to do it (to avoid being sent to the colonies). This group is The Reds.
Their bosses, the Wives (who could not provide their spouses with the coveted babies) are allowed to beat them but cannot kill them. The Wives (dressed in blue) are a privileged class of their own, as companions of the Commanders.
There are also The Econowives, striped red, blue and green dresses, the women of poorer men, who can not afford Marthas and have to do everything themselves.
Speaking of, we got the Marthas, elder women who work in the affluent household, doing the daily chores. This group of house servants considers itself lucky, since most of the elders end up digging into radioactive garbage in the Colonies, with poor food and a 3 to 5 years life expectancy.
Finally, we got the group of Aunts, doctrine teachers responsible with the brainwashing of their charges, The Handmaids. These half gurus half guardians take the young women of the old USA and transform them into passive and cooperating bodies. All is kept simple, handmaids don't need to read or write, or to think much about anything other than getting pregnant.
The Aunts too, just like the Wives, are the canary in a golden cage. Maybe powerful towards the girls, but lacking any power in the society.
Every woman is a body, an asset with a clear job/mission.
The plot is fairly straightforward. Offred (potentially June in her previous life) is captured while trying to exit Gilead, at the border with Canada. She didn't know what happened to her husband Luke and her daughter, but later in the novel she's shown a picture of her daughter, she appears to be alive and grown up. In exchange for living within the mainstream society, she has to accept to become a Handmaid, a body for rent, a surrogate mother. She is assigned to two households, after the proper training and brainwashing, but she does not get pregnant. The novel starts with her into her third (final) rotation, at the house of Commander Fred Waterford (hence her name, Offred - play on words .... Handmaids don't have full names, but rather just one name indicating to whom they belong).
Offred ends up running away, in a staged exit from the Commander's household that is orchestrated by her clandestine lover, Nick (also the Commander's personal driver/front man). As everyone is obsessed with babies in Gilead, we are allowed to believe that Nick acted on behalf of a potential pregnancy (Offred mentioned this possibility to him one night).
The Handmaid's Tale is one of the major Atwood novels. It won the GG Award for fiction in 1985, the Arthur C. Clarke Award (SF) in 1987 and the Commonwealth Literature Prize; and was nominated for the Booker Prize and the Nebula Award (both in 1986). Atwood herself, for her entire body of work, won the PEN Lifetime Achievement Award and several other lifetime recognition awards.
Looking forward to read the sequel, The Testaments, which Atwood wrote way later, in 2019.
October 31, 2019
Un très bon rythme qui en fait un excellent page turner.
Mais il est clairement fait pour les adeptes de la série et non les fans du premier livre.
Mais il est clairement fait pour les adeptes de la série et non les fans du premier livre.
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