10) The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
Book number ten, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
Rating:
4/5 stars
Review:
A friend and I coined a new term to describe this book - Huxwellian, if you will forgive us our corny lit-major humor. A tale of days to come, days that could come, if we're bad, if we trust our government, if we give up our rights little by little, if we stop voting and stop reading. Dystopia could happen. And it won't star Kevin Costner. (sorry, last corny joke, I promise). It is hard to describe the plot of this book in a short snippet, but suffice it to say that it is about a dystopic monotheocracy with a decidedly misogynistic theme. Women are reduced to either being breeders (handmaids), non-sexual life companions (Wives), or domestic servants (Marthas) after an attack that leaves the US government crippled. This book is written in memoir/diary style, told first-person from the point of view of "Offred", a handmaid for a wealthy commander and his wife, Serena Joy. Handmaids are not permitted their real names, but given patriarchal names denoting the household for which they breed.
Needless to say, this book depressed me like "Brave New World" or "1984" do whenever I read them, but it was still a very good book. Well-written, if you will forgive her over-use of adjectives and under-use of plot details and background info, and her abuse of her characters. It all fits into the subject of the book, I guess, but it is still hard on the reader.
Rating:
4/5 stars
Review:
A friend and I coined a new term to describe this book - Huxwellian, if you will forgive us our corny lit-major humor. A tale of days to come, days that could come, if we're bad, if we trust our government, if we give up our rights little by little, if we stop voting and stop reading. Dystopia could happen. And it won't star Kevin Costner. (sorry, last corny joke, I promise). It is hard to describe the plot of this book in a short snippet, but suffice it to say that it is about a dystopic monotheocracy with a decidedly misogynistic theme. Women are reduced to either being breeders (handmaids), non-sexual life companions (Wives), or domestic servants (Marthas) after an attack that leaves the US government crippled. This book is written in memoir/diary style, told first-person from the point of view of "Offred", a handmaid for a wealthy commander and his wife, Serena Joy. Handmaids are not permitted their real names, but given patriarchal names denoting the household for which they breed.
Needless to say, this book depressed me like "Brave New World" or "1984" do whenever I read them, but it was still a very good book. Well-written, if you will forgive her over-use of adjectives and under-use of plot details and background info, and her abuse of her characters. It all fits into the subject of the book, I guess, but it is still hard on the reader.
posted by neffbot at 9:54 PM
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