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A review by savaging
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
5.0
"A story is like a letter. Dear You, I’ll say. Just you, without a name. Attaching a name attaches you to the world of fact, which is riskier, more hazardous: who knows what the chances are out there, of survival, yours? I will say you, you, like an old love song."
The plot of this story isn't the point. Sure, it's 'speculative fiction' and requires some accounting of what particular political coup and sociological upset led to this redrawing of maps and mores. And a person within this world has to do something and see things and be either saved or damned. But this isn't the point. Atwood writes out a woman who never could have been and all the same it feels like pages ripped from her personal journal -- the crux of it all is that dusty old joke love in a world of power and coercion and hate. And, of course, the rest of the earth -- "Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?"
Nobody needs to speculate too hard to imagine this.
When I read this book, I think things. Like:
How perverse is the old morality. The old (and remaining) obsessions with female purity, the marriages that are like ownership, the lust after rules and punishments. Against this heavy System, sex chosen freely through mutual desire appears quaint, positively wholesome.
Also: the loneliness of the patriarch. The sadness of the ones who have all the power, who control everything but can only say, tired, "No, kiss me like you mean it." Who can only be kissed like you mean it, because when they control kisses they can't be meant. As the narrator puts it:
"Still, it must be hell, to be a man, like that.
It must be just fine.
It must be hell.
It must be very silent."
Jouissance, joy, pleasure -- they slip out of their grip. They slip out of grips. The heavy weight of economic and social inequality -- relationships can't carry it. Too much misunderstanding and resentment are built into every word.
Shards of pleasure and love, bits here and there, they wind up only where you'd least expect it, among the no-account people. Cracks in a Wall. Am I sermonizing now? Perhaps I'm sermonizing, which is a betrayal of a book like this.
The plot of this story isn't the point. Sure, it's 'speculative fiction' and requires some accounting of what particular political coup and sociological upset led to this redrawing of maps and mores. And a person within this world has to do something and see things and be either saved or damned. But this isn't the point. Atwood writes out a woman who never could have been and all the same it feels like pages ripped from her personal journal -- the crux of it all is that dusty old joke love in a world of power and coercion and hate. And, of course, the rest of the earth -- "Flowers, for instance, because where would we be without them?"
Nobody needs to speculate too hard to imagine this.
When I read this book, I think things. Like:
How perverse is the old morality. The old (and remaining) obsessions with female purity, the marriages that are like ownership, the lust after rules and punishments. Against this heavy System, sex chosen freely through mutual desire appears quaint, positively wholesome.
Also: the loneliness of the patriarch. The sadness of the ones who have all the power, who control everything but can only say, tired, "No, kiss me like you mean it." Who can only be kissed like you mean it, because when they control kisses they can't be meant. As the narrator puts it:
"Still, it must be hell, to be a man, like that.
It must be just fine.
It must be hell.
It must be very silent."
Jouissance, joy, pleasure -- they slip out of their grip. They slip out of grips. The heavy weight of economic and social inequality -- relationships can't carry it. Too much misunderstanding and resentment are built into every word.
Shards of pleasure and love, bits here and there, they wind up only where you'd least expect it, among the no-account people. Cracks in a Wall. Am I sermonizing now? Perhaps I'm sermonizing, which is a betrayal of a book like this.