Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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Reviews of The Handmaid’s Tale almost invariably start like a collective trauma memory: where were you when it happened? I was twenty-ish, an English major at a nearby university. I was taught how to analyse literature, but not how to consume it, how to distinguish it, and I don’t think we ever read this one for class. Needless to say, most of my professors were middle-aged men. I did read it, though, and it stuck with me; I read it again a few years later. […]

“Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?”

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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I worked three jobs in the summer of 2005. I frequently worked more than one during any given day. Days off did not exist- except, miraculously, for the 4th of July. The history of the 4th holds no meaning here, just that I finally had a day to myself. I spent my one day off in bed, reading The Handmaid’s Tale from cover to cover. I did not leave the room. I turned down, much to the chagrin of the person whose bed it was, all opportunities […]

Return to Gilead

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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When I saw Margaret Atwood speak at Northwestern in 2018 (Am I bragging a bit? Yes. It was so cool and she was great and I was in the second rooooow and I continue to not have chill about it) she teased an upcoming announcement and low and behold, it was the sequel to Handmaid’s Tale! I was 60/40 eager/skeptical. I never read the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, but of course that release was fraught with drama concerning Lee’s wishes. This was a […]

A good and deserving sequel

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

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The Testaments is a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale and I found it to be just as haunting as its predecessor, perhaps even more so. The significant difference between the two is that The Handmand’s Tail uses a single POV whereas The Testaments uses three characters. That difference comes through in many ways but one in particular that I thought was most interesting is the way that the different books affected the reader. The Handmaid’s Tale through Offred’s POV only shows the world of Gilead […]

You’ll write many stories, but every one will be to some greater or lesser degree about this story.

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I am, in all honesty and with true sincerity, starting to question reality. Remember when I read The Drawing of the Three (Dark Tower #2) and complained that King needs an editor because he shouldn’t be referring to his own work (the film version of The Shining) as content experienced by new characters in this totally different world? And then I read Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower #4) and I was like, “TUBE NECK HOW DARE YOU?!” but then totally turned around on it, and […]

Freedom, like everything else, is relative.

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Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale tells the story of Offred; a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead – a reconstructed United States. Offred witnesses the dissolution of her former way of life and the transformation of society into a totalitarian theocracy. Women are enslaved and stripped of even their most basic rights, they cannot choose who to be in a relationship with, they cannot, read, write, own property, gain employment or even hold on to their own name. Offred is a patronymic, it is a […]



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