Book 24 - All Done Up in Red

Title: The Handmaid's Tale  Author: Margaret Atwood Genre: scary-times-to-possibly-come fiction

I have a love-hate relationship with Atwood, and this book wholeheartedly embodies that sentiment - in that I loved it,

and then

I hated it.

The language is sparing and elegant, carefully rolling out the story and its unique setting bit by bit by bit, like sketching clean lines on a fresh sheet of paper until a whole picture makes itself apparent. Sure, Atwood waxes on a bit at times, but overall the storytelling is highly effective and obviously masterful.

The Content

Okay, here - we - GO. The story itself is fundamentally disturbing and absolutely insidious. What really drives the creep factor home is that the protag, Offred, could be any 30ish woman. She's lived our childhoods, and she's lived the times we inhabit now - and still, her thoughts and feelings are incrementally but most definitely being swayed by what her world has become.

For most of the novel, some of Offred's thoughts and choices repel me. Why doesn't she fight back, I think; why has she rolled right over and given in so easily? But by the last quarter, Atwood has broken me down - much like her own characters. It's like in situations of violence or danger; there's a way you like to think you'd act, and then the way you actually would. And nobody can really know the former unless they're there, living it. The submissive, "please, I'll be good" mentality doesn't seem so weak after all; it just seems like survival.

But Then...

She had to go ruin the novel with the goddamn last section! AGHHHH. I can't properly rage about it without giving it away (although, come on, are spoilers really an issue at this point? The series is on TV for Pete's sake...anyways...), but it absolutely crushed me. Sure, the reader is given some context, some explanations you're dying to know about throughout the book, but they're also given in a way that quash those wonderful post-reading mindwanderings, where you dissect the clues and formulate your own hypotheses. Nope, instead Atwood is kind enough to draw them aaaall out for us in stuffy prose. Goddammit, Margaret.

Rating: 👶👶👶(.5 baby)/5

I so badly want to give the book a full 4, but that last chapter has me RAGING.