Handmaid's Tale

by
No cover

Margaret Atwood: Handmaid's Tale (2012, Penguin Random House)

336 pages

English language

Published June 23, 2012 by Penguin Random House.

ISBN:
978-1-4464-8547-7
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(431 reviews)

The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England, in a strongly patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state, known as Republic of Gilead, that has overthrown the United States government. The central character and narrator is a woman named Offred, one of the group known as "handmaids", who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "commanders" – the ruling class of men. The novel explores themes of subjugated women in a patriarchal society and the various means by which they resist and attempt to gain individuality and independence. The novel's title echoes the component parts of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, which is a series of connected stories (such as "The Merchant's Tale" and "The Parson's Tale").The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987; it was also …

78 editions

reviewed The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Meh

I read the Handmaid's Tale yesterday, finally. I'm disappointed. I did not like the writing style at all, there was no real story, just descriptions. And then it just ended. No conclusion or anything.

My best guess it's because the TV show was so intense and well made (at least the earlier seasons), and the book was... Not? Episodes would stay with me for days, but I'm struggling to recall the book.

Maybe the book is supposed to be unsatisfying to go with the theme. Nothing much happened after Gilead was created, every day just kinda goes by. Sure there was some torture and death, but... Eh.

Maybe I was expecting too much after all the praise it got. It's my first Atwood book, and way way outside of my usual genre (fantasy, scifi, horror).

reviewed Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)

A must read in the current political climate, but not in love with the writing style

A must read in the current political climate. I like the Hulu TV show better than the book though... the book is good, but I just don't care for: 1) the confusing, random flashbacks in time that don't seem to be triggered by anything in the book's present time; 2) some of the deep, detailed dives into things such as the appearance of a flower. While Hemingway had an excessively sparse writing style for me, Atwood had a bit of an excessively flowery, purple-prose style at times for my taste; 3) the sensation that from the start of the book to the end of the book, nothing progressed. There didn't seem to be a plot, rather just a description of how awful life in Gilead was. Perhaps you can piece together a plot from some of the pre-Gilead flashbacks, but I prefer more linear storylines.

reviewed Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Review of "Handmaid's Tale" on 'Goodreads'

Nederlands (English below)

In aanloop naar [b:De testamenten|53109182|De testamenten|Margaret Atwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1568223162l/53109182.SX50_SY75.jpg|66802198] wilde ik ook The handmaid’s tale van Margaret Atwood (1939) herlezen, het boek waarmee de Canadese schrijver in 1985 op veel gerenommeerde shortlists terechtkwam. In 2017 kwam het opnieuw in de belangstelling na het verschijnen van de gelijknamige televisieserie; in 2019 schreef Atwood een vervolg, waarmee ze – samen met [b:Girl, Woman, Other|41081373|Girl, Woman, Other|Bernardine Evaristo|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1542296262l/41081373.SY75.jpg|64185267] van Bernardine Evaristo – de Booker Prize won.

Atwood schetst een dystopisch scenario voor de Verenigde Staten, waarin een christelijke groepering de macht heeft overgenomen en de totalitaire heilstaat Gilead heeft gesticht. Het verhaal richt zich in het bijzonder op de positie van vrouwen, die zijn gedemoveerd tot wegwerpproducten, of two-legged wombs in de woorden van hoofdpersoon Offred, een ‘dienstmaagd’ wiens bestaan afhangt van haar vruchtbaarheid. Atwood wisselt haar beschrijving van Gilead af met de herinneringen van Offred aan de …

reviewed The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)

Review of "The Handmaid's Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)" on 'Goodreads'

Slow moving, but a story that remains relevant 35 years later. I wasn’t prepared for Atwood’s high-caliber writing. It was able to keep things interesting despite the slow pace. I wish it had more plot, but it sounds like the recent sequel addresses many of the reader’s questions. The information dump at the end was my favorite part, and presented some familiar voices that have me interested in the tv series (this was the Audible series cast version).

"'I’ll take care of it', Luke said. And because he said 'it' instead of 'her' I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an 'it' where none was before. You do that first in your head, and then you make it real. So that’s how they do it, I thought. I seemed never to have known that before."

reviewed Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)

Review of "Handmaid's Tale" on 'Goodreads'

I first read this back in 1995, when I was in college. It was (I think) the first dystopian book I'd ever read, and I found it fascinating. Of course, that was when a future like that seemed unimaginable. Now, rereading it with the backdrop of current events, it feels like more than an exercise in fiction, and it's not hard to connect the dots from where we are now as a society to how we could end up in that place. I'm eager to read The Testaments and see what additional layers Ms. Atwood has created to deepen this story.

reviewed The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)

Review of "The Handmaid's Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)" on 'Goodreads'

Every time I read a novel from Margaret Atwood it is like receiving a master lesson in narrative construction and prose style. It is as though she were standing over my shoulder saying 'You see? That's how you do it." This novel is no exception.

I wanted to re-read this before starting The Testaments and also because the last time I read it I was in high school. It turns out I read some pretty great books in high school and I should probably re-read all of them because God knows 17 year old me and 42 year old me have different insights.

The Handmaid's Tale was still a word lover's delight. The puns and logophilic games are every bit as entertaining as they were when I first encountered the novel. The difference in 2019 is just how frightening everything is. There isn't a single implausible plot point here and …

reviewed The handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood

Review of "The handmaid's tale" on 'Goodreads'

It's been a few years since I read the original novel, but this graphic novel seems very short in comparison? The drawings are stark, simplified, reduced, like the life in Gilead. At times they can be too much, such as Moira's feet, which are the stuff of my nightmares now.

reviewed The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Review of "The Handmaid's Tale" on 'Goodreads'

Twee jaar geleden las ik The Handmaid's Tale van Margaret Atwood and by golly, wat een verhaal! Het was alsof ik me weer in Orwells 1984 bevond, maar dan vanuit een vrouwelijk oogpunt beschreven. En in Amerika, niet in Engeland (of Oceanië, zoals het in Orwells boek genoemd wordt). Alleen bestaan er in Atwoods dystopische toekomst geen Verenigde Staten meer: er is enkel de totalitaire christelijke Republiek Gilead.

Offred – te lezen als "Of Fred," maar ook een eerste aanwijzing naar de ongemeende puurheid van het hoofdpersonage ("off red" betekent zoveel als "onecht rood") – is een Handmaid: plat gezegd een babybroedmachine voor een hooggeplaatste Gilead-officier en zijn vrouw. Offred probeert haar stukgeregisseerde leven van wat kleur te voorzien, maar zal dat binnen de lijnen moeten doen: elke overtreding kan een zwarte zak over je hoofd betekenen. Stukje bij beetje doet Atwood een fundamentalistisch ex-Amerika uit de doeken, …

reviewed Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)

Review of "Handmaid's Tale" on 'Goodreads'

It is telling that, the entire time I knew about this book before I read it, I had assumed it was set in the far future, or at least beyond the lifespans of the present day. It is a very different story when it is basically happening a decade or two hence (with some intervening major catastrophes), something that was made clear by the "historical perspective" provided in the epilogue. Also, the show is really good but uses too much slow-mo, the bane of streaming drama.

reviewed The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)

Review of "The Handmaid's Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)" on 'Goodreads'

The Handmaid's Tale was my first Margaret Atwood and I found it highly fascinating. While it kept shooing my mind to Orwell's 1984, it was much more enjoyable than the latter. This might be due to the fact that I'm 10 years older than the version of me who read 1984, but it might also be the much more subtle way of storytelling.
I very much liked the twist at the end with the "Historical Notes", as it at once added so much more depth that the tale as such. That ending earned it the fifth star, since without this "revelation" I would have been left dangling in thin air (or dangling even more than I am now, anyway).

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Subjects

  • Fiction, dystopian
  • Canadian fiction (fictional works by one author)
  • Fiction, fantasy, general
  • Man-woman relationships, fiction

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