I’m literally years late to “The Handmaid’s Tale”, as I’ve avoided this book on principle for a long time. Not because of its content, but more to its hype and the fact that I’m usually not a huge fan of capital “L” literature. But it was selected by the members of the book club I’m proctoring, and after finishing it, I’m of two minds. On one hand I loved it and can totally get behind the hype. On the other, it left me wanting, and […]
I Think I Read This at Just the Right Time in My Life
With the recent release of television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, I made a realization: I am a Canadian who has never read anything by Margaret Atwood before. And she a national treasure!!! You’d think I would have at least come across something in my school curriculum, especially given that I even studied English as my minor in university. Really the only prominent Canadian author I had as assigned reading was Alice Munro. That seems… odd to me. But in any case, here we are […]
Terrifyingly timely
There’s been a whole bunch of reviews posted for this book already, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time recapping the plot in my own words. Goodreads can help me out here: 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 the food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her […]
Glad I’m Not In Gilead
The odds are good that you’ve already read this book, so I don’t really need to tell you what it’s about. But on the off-chance that you haven’t even heard of it, let’s just say that it’s a page from a future nightmare, a dystopian society where a woman’s role is either a housekeeper, a wife, or a handmaid. Women in this world don’t have jobs outside the house, and have no money of their own. If the woman is the wife of a wealthy man, […]
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.”
After an unintentional series of memoirs, I began The Handmaid’s Tale on International Women’s Day- it seemed appropriate- and couldn’t put it down. Atwood tells a “speculative fiction” story set in the not too distant future where fertility has dwindled and religious fanatics control the government. After they overthrew the government the Sons of Jacob established a theological dictatorship called Gilead. In this new world fertile women, handmaids, are sent to powerful men’s homes if their wives have not been able to produce a child. Offred, literally […]
View from Above
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
When I first read The Handmaid’s Tale, I was getting my Master’s Degree and it was for a class on Body Politics in literature. Then for my second reading, I was working on a PhD and it was for a “Democracy in Literature of the Americas” class. For the first class, Bush was president and for the second time, Obama was brand new to the office. And now, well, it’s Trump. I picked this one up again to read as a companion piece to my review […]