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

Margaret Atwood

Start date: March 1, 2010

Finish date: March 31, 2010

Discussion: Chapter 3: Literary Fiction

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Chapter 3: Literary Fiction

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Mar 14, 2018 Cee marked it as unfinished

Shelves: stand-alone, adult-fiction, literary-fiction, dystopian

It pains me to say, but I'm going to set The Handmaid's Tale aside for now. The book has been incredibly influential since it was written, inspiring many feminist critical interpretations of its dystopian future vision in which women have lost all rights.

For all this, The Handmaid's Tale should be right up my alley. Yet I felt detached and even bored with the book. I read about half before deciding that I didn't care enough to slog through another half. I don't like how Ms Atwood plays coy with It pains me to say, but I'm going to set The Handmaid's Tale aside for now. The book has been incredibly influential since it was written, inspiring many feminist critical interpretations of its dystopian future vision in which women have lost all rights.

For all this, The Handmaid's Tale should be right up my alley. Yet I felt detached and even bored with the book. I read about half before deciding that I didn't care enough to slog through another half. I don't like how Ms Atwood plays coy with us. She dangles this world and these characters in front of us, teasing us, intriguing us. You want to know how Gilead became what it is, what is really going on beyond its walls. You want to know Offred's past, but this information is only fed in snippets, splintered throughout the novel. While I can appreciate the significance of this opaqueness - just like the women in the novel whisper small facts about themselves from bed to bed, so we are only fed the minimal of information - it just made me lose interest.

Added to that, I have an issue with this kind of dystopian, probably due to no fault of Ms Atwood's at all. Women are divided into strict castes, with colour-coded in their clothing. It is a device I have seen so many times in contemporary YA dystopias. From The Hunger Games's districts to Divergent's factions, these dystopias rely on the strictest of lines drawn through society. If there is anything I have learnt during my culture history degree about human societies, it is that things are never this simple. No matter how hard borders are imposed by a state or authority, lines keep being blurred and crossed continually, perhaps in small ways, but often significantly. Therefore I find little insight in fictions that rely on these strictest of boundaries to make a point. The issue nowadays isn't that we have three specific kinds of women all of whom are bound by their role. People exist in many intersections that can be oppressive to them, and by removing these complexities a book, in my mind, diminishes its power as social commentary.

It is a shame The Handmaid's Tale didn't resonate with me as much as it has done for others. ...more

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Apr 21, 2010 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, literary-fiction, favorites, fiction, novels, ultimate-reading-list, ebooks, libertarian, before-i-die

This story thoroughly engaged me from the start and really zipped past, as well-paced as any thriller. Unlike most novels that could be described as such though, this is beautifully written with prose poetic in power and imagery. It's been described as a "feminist novel" and though that's accurate enough, it never felt preachy or didactic to me; I think that's because Atwood's world is so well-imagined, so detailed, I felt both well-grounded in its reality and fascinated by its working out.

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