The Transatlantic Book Club discussion

First, I have to say that the five-star rating system is rather maddening, because as much as I enjoyed it, it wasn't quite as good as The Blind Assassin.
I was ambivalent about wanting to read this, because I find Atwood's novels rather hit-or-miss; The Blind Assassin was the first one I really loved. I read Alias Grace when it first came out and somewhat enjoyed it, but I tried to read Cat's Eye later and hated it. Now I wish I'd read this a long time ago, it wouldn’t have put me off Atwood’s novels for so long.
It was less futuristic than I'd anticipated; it was odd reading a vision of the future that is so different technologically than our lives as they are now, having done away with paper and coin money but not having cell phones. I’m not usually a fan of dystopian fiction, but I found this novel particularly compelling because of the elements of the story that are so plausible in today’s world, the various theocratic movements, societies and splinter groups that insist on taking (parts of) religious texts literally, and the frequent arguments over the place of faith, particularly Christianity, in public life in the U.S.
The thing I love best about Atwood’s writing is her fascination with the symbolism of words and images, which are all the more significant in this story because reading, and, for the most part, conversation, are denied to women. The words that the narrator fixates on, for instance, like her meditation on the word job and all its different meanings, reminded me again and again of Atwood’s poem “Spelling” (1981):

Spelling

My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell,
spelling,
how to make spells.

I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child.
there is no either/or.
However.

I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labour, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.

Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.

A word after a word
after a word is power.

At the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.

How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first,
your first naming, your first name,
your first word.



This is a bit unfocused for a review, but no doubt I’ll be able to organize my thoughts better as the conversation continues. What did everyone else think of the novel?

I really liked it. I was particularly taken with the way Atwood dealt with how it would feel to know so little about what was going on in the world - what had happened to the people Offred knew. I really liked the bits about the different beliefs she had about what had happened to Luke. Also the whole business about Moira, the way Offred makes something of a heroine out of her, but cautiously, whether she is too conscious of how unlikely she is to have escaped, or just doesn't want to get her hopes up. Then that brilliant bit about the story she would like to tell about Moira, after she catches up with her.

I found it really plausible too, and very engaging. I think in both of these ways it was better than Orwell's 1984 (which, of course, it has a lot in common with). I suppose this has a lot to do with the character of Offred - she is easier to identify with than Winston, perhaps because her links to the world before the change of regime are stronger and more pathetic.

I found it, occasionally uncomfortably, thought provoking, about women's roles in society, about what is left to achieve in terms of gender equality, about how fortunate most people are in the developed world, about how desperatley unfair life still is for women in some places/cultures/households.

I think a book like this needs writing once in a while because of what it says, that it was such a bloody good read makes it excpetional.

This was the first book I read by her. I really enjoyed it. The dystopian future appeals to me by nature but I really felt she did something different with it. Essentially, she didn't share anything about how it happened or why. She offers speculation and her own memories, but there is no behind the curtain perspective of what is going on. I fell in love with her writing style and her obvious love of words, it makes sense she is also a poet, at times it felt like I was reading poetry. I agree that it played well into the story since women are so restricted in how they can speak. It was depressing to note how the story still seems like it could happen.