Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one option: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like all dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire – neither Offred’s nor that of the two men on whom her future hangs.
Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of twenty-first century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood’s devastating irony, wit and astute perception. 

Comment: This is an already considered classic book I had in sights for a long time. I put of reading it because I always feared it would be too shocking, not as much in its content but in how it would make me feel, in how it would irritate my contemporary sensibilities especially because it was a finished work. 

Some books are like this, they just make you want to go there and tell those characters what they are doing is wrong and they are not being fair. Recently, I got a cheaper edition and decided to just get it out of my anticipation list.

The action takes place in Gilead, a new sort of country/Republic that was created after the assassination of the president of the US and the Congress and where a group of people decided to return to a type of life according to some of the laws in the Ancient Testament, namely when it comes to women and their roles in society.

This new "world" is terribly unfair and punishing but it was approved and does happen because of the infertility issues in the population, due to the several biologic, chemical and environmental issues that affected the health of everyone. Thus, the women who can still have children are now used by a small group of men, in order to keep the population going, but only for a few selected. This is what Offred, the narrator of this story, shares with the reader...

This is a quite famous story by author Margaret Atwood because of its horrifying content when it comes to how women are treated in an hypothetically dystopian reality. In the recent times it got to be even more popular because of several feminist movements among celebrities and also the TV series with the same title.

I have not seen the series yet but I think it will be interesting to do that now that I've read the book.

I don't think I need to write much about this book and its content and supposed messages because many have done it already and there are many places one can access to have more (and better) information and reviews on it. I had also read another book by the author, so the writing style didn't bother me either. 

Some people have commented the first person narrator with so many flashbacks to Offred's life before she became a handmaid made the story too vague. I agree with this and I assume the purpose was not only to create a comparison situation but also to let the readers make their own minds about what was going on. For this, I must say I really liked the last chapter of the book, apparently an historical recollection many years after the happenings in Offred's tale, where we got to have some answers but they were still not enough, in my perspective.

Of course, one must think the possibilities and the details missing is what makes this passionate. The unknown, the need to have more on certain questions drives the person to an addictive need to keep reading. Each new thing Offeed would say only made things seem more dire and inexplicable, it does seem so difficult to imagine someone would actually let something like that happen.

This is fiction but then again, I allow myself to think of several countries where, like in this book, women have no rights, they must let men control their steps, who they marry, who they see, where they go, how long can they go... It's truly frightening to think there are places where Offred's reality already happens, even if with different rules and reasons.

This is the true beauty of this story: it is a fictional situation that can so easily become reality under a different name/so called-tradition or cultural base.

Since the story is told by Offred, it through her we get to know many things. I did like the fact she would insert new information if she had to, namely because she was dealing with something that had to be explained, but at the same time that let too many things in the air as she was not aware of every detail. There's a lot of inner thinking and considerations which are there to let us wonder about the ethics and the morality of many issues. I suppose the questions I'd have liked to know more about were why did those people so successful? Why didn't other countries/communities allow it to happen?

Another little detail I found intriguing, right at the beginning, Offred and another woman are seen by a group of Japanese tourists and we get to know their reality was alike reality today. I kept thinking, why are these people allowed to come and visit and gawk at people? If Gilead was such a bad place how could people see and do nothing?

Then reality, once again, fell down on me: we, world, at this moment I write this, let so many people die and be punished in their countries for situations often unfair, unproved, unethical. Margaret Atwood just disguised reality with a new name and silly details like clothes' colors and raping rituals.

As a whole, this is quite a provoking book as it was certainly intended. I liked reading this for that.

However, the specific details of Gilead, its inhabitants and the system in practice weren't as explained and addictive as I expected and the constant mentions of before, despite necessary in some parts and whimsical in others, just lacked objectivity for me to appreciate them.

It does sound contradictory but what makes this novel special and unique is, at the same time, what makes it frustrating to read at times. Too vague in some aspects.

Grade: 6/10