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The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)

Margaret Atwood

Start date: March 1, 2017

Finish date: March 25, 2017

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Why we're reading this: Group Classic Novel discussion March 2017
#22 on NPR's Top 100 SF/F novels of all time (2011 poll) http://…more
[close] Group Classic Novel discussion March 2017
#22 on NPR's Top 100 SF/F novels of all time (2011 poll) http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/1390858...
#38 on Locus Magazines Best SciFi novels of the 20th century http://www.locusmag.com/2012/AllCentu...

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What Members Thought

Jan 20, 2011 Andrew rated it really liked it

Ok where to start with this book - well first of all there are far better reviews than anything I could post. The book is as the cover rightly says, is a modern classic and I will not challenge that.

The book has undergone many reprints, has been turned in to a film and there are several literary dissertations on it (and that is all that I am aware of I am sure there are more)

But what of the book itself - it is chillingly believable - even more so with the state of the world. On one had you see ...more

31 likes · Like · see review

Jul 10, 2025 Netanella rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2025-july-reading-challenges, 2025-sffbc-read-all-the-books, dystopian, feminist, 2025-horror-aficionados-mount-tbr

I am a bit shocked at myself for having taken this long to read, finally, such a culturally significant work. I knew the basics of the story, of course - it's a dystopian tale set in near-future America where women have been reduced to their reproductive abilities. Handmaids in their characteristic red dress and white head covering have become international symbols of protest against governments that seek, again and again, to restrict women's rights to control their own bodies.

Margaret Atwood i ...more

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Mar 04, 2017 Kivrin rated it liked it · review of another edition

First, I'm not a fan of stream of consciousness format. There's a reason we don't say everything that comes into our heads...it's boring!

That said, I liked the premise of this book. A future world where women are much less than second class citizens. They are chattel to be cared for, petted, used, and abused by men. The Handmaid is a woman who can still bear children is this increasingly barren society. Not that she can bear them for herself; she has to bear children for the elite. I found this ...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Kim rated it really liked it

Strange, perversely interesting, and very affecting (perhaps particularly so if you're a woman). Undeniably, a 1984 backdrop. I think what might've been more disturbing than the constantly present oppression of women by a society (which, by the way, is something incomprehensibly large and more ominous than "men" as a group) was the way in which women (within the same class, and of different classes) were pitted against each other. In Atwood's society, to be a woman, even one of high status, is t ...more

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Nov 11, 2014 mina rated it liked it

An intensely scary book about a theocratic regime in its extreme. I wish the protagonist acted more, though. Maybe Atwood wanted to show what common people would do in this situation: resigned themselves to the fate determined for them. I am also a bit disappointed of the unexplained ending of Gilead regime.

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Mar 05, 2009 Mandy rated it really liked it

This is a very interesting and thought provoking story. There is some language in it. It is futuristic, and yet, some of it doesn't seem to far off. Very interesting though.

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