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

Sep 01, 2018 Christina's Book Chronicles rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: own, classics, series, 1001-books, fiction, women-studies, checked-in, feminism, horror, science-fiction

Wow! What a twisted and scary story. I've been meaning to read this book for years and then with all the hype, especially in the current political climate and the show out, I finally moved it up on my TBR. Can't wait to start the show. ...more

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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 20, 2011 Charles rated it really liked it

A creepy post-apocalypic tale of misogyny and mysery and infertility and toxic destruction of the former US; of power and deceit and ugliness. A 1984-like tale, except more horrid and luridly believable. Like a roadside accident, you stare, not believing -- or, not wanting to believe.

Only the ending was disappointing. It. Just. Like. Ended.

Nevertheless, an interesting book. In a creepy way, of course.

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Dec 08, 2010 Angela Bagwell rated it it was amazing

Wow this book kept me up at night. It actually fucked with my head a little. It was a very scary concept and got my head thinking, and not a flowery scene either. I loved loved loved her very unique prose she used to describe how her life has dissolved and her fight to stay alive simply by submitting to the awful subjugation inflicted among them. I recommend everyone to read this at least once.

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Aug 25, 2011 Raquel rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2014

"We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.
Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you'd be boiled to death before you knew it" p.56 ...more

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