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A review by sasstronaut
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
5.0
A dystopian future in which most women are infertile and the fertile ones are property.
I liked this much more than I thought I would! The only thing I can say against it is it left me wanting more.
We don’t get much of Gilead as a whole, merely the parts that our main character can see, which, as a handmaid, is very little. What we do see is a world about control of women’s bodies to the extent that we use them as a commodity and try our best to de-humanize them. There is a great surveillance state that serves to keep everyone paranoid of each other and helps to keep any real relationships from forming.
Dystopian novels will always catch my eye and I like that there’s a different way each one plays out. The fact that this is yet another such novel that we can see hints of in our current life is disturbing, but also makes the story so much more thought-provoking and terrifying. I don’t think the purpose of these is to say we will end up this way inevitably, but to look at all the little things that make up the dystopian landscape and realize how insidious all those little pieces can be in the whole scheme of our daily lives.
I liked this much more than I thought I would! The only thing I can say against it is it left me wanting more.
We don’t get much of Gilead as a whole, merely the parts that our main character can see, which, as a handmaid, is very little. What we do see is a world about control of women’s bodies to the extent that we use them as a commodity and try our best to de-humanize them. There is a great surveillance state that serves to keep everyone paranoid of each other and helps to keep any real relationships from forming.
Dystopian novels will always catch my eye and I like that there’s a different way each one plays out. The fact that this is yet another such novel that we can see hints of in our current life is disturbing, but also makes the story so much more thought-provoking and terrifying. I don’t think the purpose of these is to say we will end up this way inevitably, but to look at all the little things that make up the dystopian landscape and realize how insidious all those little pieces can be in the whole scheme of our daily lives.