Reviews with content warning for Confinement - The Handmaid's Tale

Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

146 reviews

kileyjojo's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Everything great has already been said about this book. It’s intriguing and horrific at times. The dystopian future is eerie and the fact that so much of this novel had been based on real events speaks volumes. It can be a hard read at times but it had a very powerful message.

The pacing does struggle every now and then and the ending feels abrupt.

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samshort's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Great book.

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apatheticastronaut13's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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kayjezza's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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pokecol's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

It is hard to say much about this book as a story because I feel fundamentally there isn't one. A good deal of the design of the plot layout is to inform us and to educate us in this frame of reference so that we might interpret the smaller actions within the bounds of this set-up. This is very good at doing its intended job, making us uncomfortable, question and abhorred by such a possible interpretation of the future.
However, as a narrative, the amount of content could make perhaps 3 or 4 chapters maximum. All that is told occurs as: part of the collective, Moira vanishes, meet a man, eventually find a zone of comfort in the horror, find Moira again and "escape". But also not really, because some of the events aren't true at all, a lot of the story ends up having been a fantasy of the Main Character derived to display a measure of comfort compared to what she is known in the identity of telling the story herself.
I do think there is of course a lot of power in this whole way of telling The Handmaid's Tale, but it makes for an admittedly very dull experience besides the deeper reflective context of the book.

Fundamentally the divined idea of the society proposed is disgusting and the hyper subjugation tickles a sore-point for me in a way I do not enjoy. I feel there is required reading in the intent of the novel but it only explores so much through the idea of our Main Character and provides little in the expansive meaning or identity of these change beyond hierarchy. As a story the snippets we flashback to and compare the lives before and after, is excellent and made for compelling hope in drawing our Main Character out from this world eventually.

But the fact of the matter is we do not really have any progress to the story, at all, for the first entire two thirds of the book, and then the last third ends up not even necessarily being true. I do not fault the MC for her choices and attitude, considering the circumstances she is very much doing better than one might expect - yet as having just finished it, I do not at all recall her name.
The fact that some points of reference are used to describe the horrific nature of the set-up but we skip over the "really bad" parts near the end seems to be a really weird choice. I have no interest in abuse topics at the best of times but I have to say that it seems a backwards idea to avoid that harshest dichotomy to near the conclusion in the failure to escape - even if it is to help frame the whole scenario as a more positive outcome.

Unlike other deeply dystopian outlooks on modernity, I do not feel I got so much a good a grasp on things that allowed me to live the experiences, or understand character perspective. I feel a little trite in critiquing The Handmaid's Tale for solely it's story content, because there is more message to it than that, however, such a message can be conveyed by many means and Margaret Atwood chose for it to be a fiction novel - and in many respects the fiction novel part is where it fails the most in my reading experience.
I do think though, the world is revoltingly plausible, and in many ways these smaller accumulating elements are no stranger to a 21st century world already. In predictive, and cautionary, writings such as this I think The Handmaid's Tale does do its job providing the subject matter to a reader.

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