The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1) in Pick-a-Shelf

May 20, 2017 Sassafrass rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, 1-kindle-unlimited, dystopia, post-apocalyptic, kindle, 1-whispersync, z-2017, z-challenge-books-2017, z-2017-audio, team-scottie-dog

Does this author know the future?

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

*4.5 STARS*

So, um, yeah, that just happened. I finished reading this book and I was floored. I had to go to fluffy, light reading for a few days just to help process this. The book was great, it was, but it was eerie that a book written in 1986 can be so relevant today.

I got chills when the narrator, Offred was talking about how women's rights were slowly eroded before the big change occurred. First it was not access ...more

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Apr 09, 2017 Stacy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, classic, 1001-books, 2017, 52-books-around-the-year-2017, science-fiction

If you haven't read this book yet, you need to! It is scary how real this could be. When you are a female and forced to quit your job, have your money taken away from you, and if you are a single mother or not in your first marriage, have your child taken away from you. And it that wasn't bad enough, be made to reproduce for the elite top tier brass. This book blew my mind! I absolutely loved the writing style that Margaret Atwood had in this. It took me most of the book to figure out the names ...more

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Mar 18, 2010 Sandy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle, feminism, sci-fi-fantasy, 5-star-books, src-winter-2010-11, read-in-2011, read-in-2019, src-summer-2019-read, read-in-2022, src-summer-2022-read

I first read this in 2011. It's even scarier now. ...more

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Jul 31, 2018 Ruth rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: entrapment, 2018-read-books, psychological-mental-issues, bv-magic-square-18, sci-fi, dystopia-apocolyptic, cult-brainwashed, award-winner, feminism, 52-books-2018

I might come back and read it again and give it 5 stars.

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Sep 12, 2010 Rachel rated it did not like it

The book is about a future dystopia that could happen if women lose their rights, while also suggesting that women fighting for their rights in the 80s were man-hating crazy people who brought this upon themselves.

I tried reading this about a decade ago. I hated it.
With all the hype, I thought I'd try it again. Still hate it.

The current political climate is scary because of the anger and hate the pervades political and social speech. It is scary that so many politicians seem bent on taking away The book is about a future dystopia that could happen if women lose their rights, while also suggesting that women fighting for their rights in the 80s were man-hating crazy people who brought this upon themselves.

I tried reading this about a decade ago. I hated it.
With all the hype, I thought I'd try it again. Still hate it.

The current political climate is scary because of the anger and hate the pervades political and social speech. It is scary that so many politicians seem bent on taking away women's heath care options, and especially poor women's heath care options. The current administrations scares me because of the ways in which it is undermining the nations trust in the judiciary and the media. Theoretically, a book about a future dystopia in which women are property with no rights and an authoritarian regime oppresses pretty much everyone should draw parallels to our own potential future, but this book seemed like a cheap, incomplete, and not particularly thoughtful way to draw those similarities.

Historically, injustices committed and allowed by the mass population happen when people are split and pitted against on another. Christian/Aryan vs Jew in Nazi Germany, Black slaves vs white free people in the US during slavery, poor blacks vs poor whites after the civil war in the us, recent immigrants and people who'd been here longer all over the US in many many iterations and local versions of the conflict since Columbus (and continuing today). So what I don't see and what I think has to be there is this division in the story of this book. I don't buy the ways in which women are pitted against each other in this story without race, ethnicity, religion, etc coming into it.
I know, Atwood sends all the non-whites somewhere else from Gilead, but that's an author's cheat so she didn't have to deal with anything but sex. The author is lazy in this.

The book is so focused on sex. It just seems so unlikely and contrived. The conservative Christian fundamentalist whatever in our country for real is focused on punishing women for having sex and making them have babies wanted or unwanted, but at the same time they're making regular people work for starvation wages while hoarding wealth, cutting access to healthcare, scapegoating immigrants and muslims, there's just so much more space for the government of Gilead to be a realistic future dystopia without being all about kinky sex that no one likes. It's really hard to imagine all the players, including the wives and the generals going along with this with no clear payout for their involvement?

The garbage at the end of the book P!**ed me off even more. WTH is Atwood playing at with her equivocation of whether the book is feminist or not? She makes up a bananas definition for feminism and then says this isn't "that kind" of feminism. This author hates the feminist movement of the 1980s (and maybe now, too) just as much as she hates Christian fundamentalism.

yuck. no. ...more

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May 28, 2014 Kammie rated it liked it

Shelves: bean-there-read-that

I was torn on how to rate this. I think this is an important book, and one that everyone would benefit from having the chance to read. I can understand the acclaim. That said, I'm not a huge fan of dystopian fiction, so I do not see myself reading it again. Any rating represents my personal tastes far more than the book itself. ...more

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