The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1) in The Alternative Worlds

Mar 22, 2011 ~Geektastic~ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed, 2011, owned, 20th-century-classics, bucket-list, dystopian-and-speculative

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood has created a claustrophobic vision of the near-future that is as lyrical as it is chilling. Truly great speculative or dystopian fiction is based in reality; the horrors of the future must be believable to have power, and this is powerful stuff.

The Republic of Gilead (formerly the USA) is a place ruled by a shadowy government of religious fanatics who have imposed their values by terror and lies. Women no longer have access to the things they once took In The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood has created a claustrophobic vision of the near-future that is as lyrical as it is chilling. Truly great speculative or dystopian fiction is based in reality; the horrors of the future must be believable to have power, and this is powerful stuff.

The Republic of Gilead (formerly the USA) is a place ruled by a shadowy government of religious fanatics who have imposed their values by terror and lies. Women no longer have access to the things they once took for granted, like a job, money or even literacy. In this new construct there exists a strict hierarchy, and within that hierarchy perhaps the strangest and most precarious role is that of Handmaid. The narrator of this tale is the Handmaid Offred, a woman who once had a life and a family, but is now reduced solely to her biology: she is a walking set of sexual organs whose sole reason for existence is to give birth to a child who will then be given to the family of a high ranking political official, to be raised within the new system.

Offred’s story is told through observation, perception and intuition. As a woman, she is not privy to direct information of any kind, but must glean what she can from other women, who may or may not be trustworthy. This method of storytelling is particularly effective, as it only reveals things in brief glimpses, evoking the very feelings of confusion and loss that Offred is experiencing. Atwood has always excelled at conveying the inner turmoil of her characters, something I first noticed when reading Cat’s Eye. She is a master of highlighting the nameless feelings that make up so much of our existence and creating a narrative from the bare bones of seemingly trivial observations.

The events of The Handmaid’s Tale are presented as a reconstruction, and thus Offred is an unreliable narrator. However, this is unimportant; it is not the events so much as their emotional and personal impact that truly matter.

One of the most frightening and subversive elements of the story is not revealed until the end, in the “Historical Notes” epilogue.(view spoiler)

It is these elements, the personal and the ephemeral, in combination with a frighteningly plausible vision, that gives this book so much power and makes it, for me, a 5-star read. ...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Sandi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, audiobooks

It's probably been 20-25 years since I last read The Handmaid's Tale. What stuck with me over the years was the awful purpose of the handmaids and how utterly depressing women's lives were. What I didn't remember was the fact that it was just as bad for the men. Sure, the laws "favored" men, but they were every bit as trapped in their roles as the women were. They had to have sex for procreation. Because the law said that men couldn't be deemed sterile, the men who couldn't impregnate a woman mu ...more

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May 29, 2011 Kara Babcock rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011-read, own, utopia-dystopia, science-fiction, feminism, canadian-author, religion-fiction, nebula-nominee

Margaret Atwood looms large in that particularly Canadian part of my literary subconscious, the part that natters at me to call stuff "CanLit" and berates me for having never read anything by Michael Ondaatje. Atwood is Kind Of A Big Deal, but so far I have managed to avoid reading any of her novels and have read, as far as I can recall, one of her short stories. Already, though, I have a bone to pick with Atwood. She has this weird bias against science fiction and insists that she doesn't write ...more

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Jun 08, 2012 Simon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf, npr-top-100

Just after I started reading this book I read this article in the Guardian: My hero: George Orwell by Margaret Atwood. She concluded the article by stating that she wanted to write a dystopia that was from the female point of view. That's exactly what she did.

I find it hard to articulate why exactly but I found the explanation, that is revealed piece meal in the protagonists scattered narrative, for how the new state of society came into being somewhat unconvincing. The story is set so soon afte ...more

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Apr 05, 2017 Suz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopian, award-winner, audiobook, science-fiction, non-men-sff-authors, horror, feminist, because-it-s-a-movie, amazeballs

I've reviewed this book before, and it's still one of my favorite books of all time, but in some ways is now my least favorite as the depressing realism in it is, well, real.

You know the story (because we're living it). An American-Taliban like religious group (this one called the Sons of Jacob, instead of, you know, the GOP) has taken over and regimented life, assigning people to their various classes and roles based on their power, reproductive ability, and socioeconomic status.

This story is t ...more

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