The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

Review or The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

       The only other book Ive read by Margaret Atwood is Alias Grace, a mystery based on the real life of Grace Marks. However, Im glad to see The Handmaids Tale on this list if for no other reason than it is controversial. I just picked up a book by Jodi Picoult, who is known for controversy as well.

       I happened to watch an interview of Margaret Atwood just after reading this book several years ago. In discussing the many angry letters she has received by various religious people, she made the point that nothing in The Handmaids Tale is fiction in that it has happened somewhere, sometime in our world. In thinking about this statement, I could see this is true. Also, a specific religion is never mentioned. But it does not surprise me that Ms. Atwood would receive hate mail from good Christians just the sameperhaps only confirming fears of what a theocracy would be like.

       I recommend The Handmaids Tale. It is futuristic, philosophical, political, and a cautionary tale all rolled into one.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood was reviewed by L. Amberson

         The futuristic novel gets a literary update and a feminist spin. Let me just say, this book is so cool. A lot of Margaret Atwood's other novels are pretty character-driven, dead-on impersonations of women surviving a crisis moment. This one uses her literary skills but also her vivid imagination to create a surprisingly believable interpretation of the future a la Ray Bradbury or George Orwell, where behavior is supressed by the governement of course, but through a bizarre division of labor, wherein a woman is not all things but only one thing. She is either a nurse, a queen, a baby machine, a prostitute, etc. Of course this novel is about escaping that world.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood was reviewed by Melissa

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