A Dash of Words with Loleta Abi Romance Author

The Book Corner 6/20/19: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Loleta Abi

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Anchor 1998.

Amazon’s blurb: From the bestselling author of Alias Grace and the MaddAddam trilogy, here is the #1 New York Times bestseller and seminal work of speculative fiction from the Booker Prize-winning author.

Now a Hulu series starring Elizabeth Moss, Samira Wiley, and Joseph Fiennes. Includes a new introduction by Margaret Atwood.

Look for The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, coming September 2019.

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable.

Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now….

Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, The Handmaid’s Tale is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and literary tour de force.

My Review: Brace yourselves! I didn’t like it. Not one little bit. I found it boring and hard to identify with the heroine. If our world ever comes to that, I hope I’m not around. She cared for her daughter in parts but her husband, she seemed to only vaguely have feelings for. One man or another could replace him it appeared. I found her concern for her friends genuine. And the most caring I’d seen her throughout. I understand in that kind of world she’d be aloof. But it hasn’t been that long since she’d been taken from her husband and daughter and forced to serve as a broodmare for an old general. The whole society is baffling to me. There seems to be an outside that’s not affected by what’s going on for these women.

I guess it’s just not to my taste.