Isabel's Reviews > The Handmaid’s Tale

The story depicted is a horrifying view of a patriarchalistic future, it is easy to see where some of the hints come from, the ones that are not, are clarified in the final chapter: Historical Notes, which presents an easy resource to come out of the story. The open end is somewhat disappointing, even a bit lazy writing?

The tone and the pace are very monotonous, which induces you to the estate of mind of the characters. You are drowned by it, suffocated. This is my first Margaret Atwood book and I wonder if this is her style all together or just the voice held in this book.

I am appalled by the thought that women can be thought to comply easily with what is depicted in this story, only the mere display of this is very sexist. Women are not sheep nor sheepish and I am sure that if anything like this was to be imposed over us we would fight to the death to prevent it.

I am lucky that the author presented the sequel in 2019, I can only imagine what it must have been like to read The Handmaiden's Tale in 1985 and be left out with that open ending...

I have read this book during the Covid-19 quarantine and it has been a hard book to swallow. I almost put it down on the first fifty pages, but little by little it has been growing in me until I wanted to know more. I am going to rest now and will read The Testaments (the sequel) after a book or two...

Anyhow, this is a brave speculative fiction dystopia, especially if you take into account it was written back in the mid-eighties...