Rating: 
Summary: A disturbing dystopia. Could it ever (or did it ever) happen
Review: Margaret Atwood creates a chilling society, one that is clearly dying and trying to return to fundamentals in order to survive. But as George Land points out in "Grow or Die", it isn't possible to return down the tree trunk to our roots; we grow and change or we die. The yearning to return to fundamentals is always a sign that society must change or perish.The fictional regime of Gilead has no balm; the laws are based on a psychotic, Hitlerian interpretation of the Bible; women who were once divorced and remarried are "adulterous" and thus fit only to serve as handmaids to the ruling class, who by and large are infertile because of an ecological disaster. The handmaids are to bear children on the knees of the true wives, as Bilhah did for Rachel in Genesis. Since male infertility is not doctrinal, the handmaids must reproduce or die; after three chances they are reassigned to toxic waste cleanup dumps, where they die of poisoning. The Handmaids don't even have names; they take the name from their master and it changes as they are transferred from house to house; thus their very identity is killed. Nuns, intellectuals,unmarried, lesbians, career women are assigned to state bordellos in what were once luxury high rise hotels and now resemble sinister Playboy Clubs. The cleverness of the book is in Atwood's creation of almost commonplace marketing-like terms for some of the nightmare activities in Gilead; Particicution for an updated version of stoning a political prisoner to death; Prayvaganzas for mass rallys and indoctrinations. Offred, the Handmaid of the tale, has been somewhat unsuccessfully brainwashed by the regime and is on her last chance to produce some offspring for Fred, who is a highly placed official in Gilead and his wife, a former television singer. Fred, who is a slick villain, wants something more personal than the ritualized monthly shagging-as-religious-rite (with the wife holding the Handmaid.) He tries to strike up some kind of relationship, with Offred, whose real name we never learn. He woos her with hand cream (forbidden), magazines (forbidden) and games of scrabble. He clumsily tries to cajole her along--totally oblivious to the rage and pain of a woman who's husband was presumably killed and who's daughter was taken away and given to a "deserving" family. The wife toys with Offred too; she wants the status of a child and plies her with cigarettes, a picture of her daughter and a illicit plan to have Offred conceive. If it fails, Offred will hang. It could also be her ticket out of the nightmare. This is a gripping tale, well written with no excess words. It has the spareness of a journal with an almost fable-like quality. It's also fun to read this book and Tepper's Gate to Women's Country for an interesting comparison.
Rating:
Summary: A novel which each woman should read before she turns 25
Review: For a book that was written over twenty years ago, it is disturbing, if not shocking, how Atwood's message of inverse discrimination against women has become presciently true. Elements of the Religious Right in America are proponents of the very scary beliefs that are devastatingly explored in Atwood's groundbreaking work. I do not read feminist literature but this book appealed to me both as an intelligent person and, moreover, as a young woman. It is an extremely clever book with many thought provoking ideas. What people tend to gloss over, however, is that this book also contains a marvellous story. It is set in the near future, a world which seems vaguely familiar but is yet deeply strange, and there is a great deal of suspense. It is a captivating novel on many levels. Highly recommended and essential reading for all women aged 25 and under.
Rating: 
Summary: Required reading? Sad day for education
Review: The plot has holes you can drive a truck through. What happened to the women in the military at the time of the takeover? Did they just give it up for the country? This book was written in '85 or so, according to my copy, and the US (the story is about the US in a possible future) has had women in the military for years. Did the author just ignore this? Please. Can you see any woman, civilian or military, going along with this nonsense? I can't. Also, this was a very primitive future society--they execute by hanging. How hard could it have been to hit someone over the head, steal clothes/weapons/trucks and just leave? The "willing suspension of disbelief" employed while reading fiction (this utterly fails as science fiction) is impossible with such a laughable storyline. Women everywhere should be offended by this book, as they are here portrayed as being dumb as dirt, motivated only by clothes, cosmetics, and women's magazines. So dumb, in fact, that they deserve what happens to them in this story. I am sorry to see all the reviews mentioning this as required reading--the sorry state of education the world over, I guess. Also, if this is the best Canada can offer the world in terms of literature, I wouldn't brag about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Thinly-veiled Lefty Rant
Review: Thinly-veiled left rant disguised as Orwellian thriller. Well-written and a good read overall, but one wonders why a writer of Atwood's obvious gifts could not have been a little more subtle and less pedantic.
Rating: 
Summary: A feminist dystopia
Review: This book is a first-person narrative from the perspective of a character named Offred (who is a Handmaid). The whole society is based on about 5-10 verses from the Bible which, when ripped out of context and twisted, would seem to indictate that Christianity is anti-women. The basic idea is that an unnamed Protestant Christian denomination takes over the USA and totally reconstructs the society in a radical way. There is some sort of disaster/war which sterilizes a large segment of the female population thus the remaining fertile females are pressed into service as breeding machines (called Handmaids). There is a whole new social structure set up with Aunts (who train Handmaids; Aunts are the only class of women allowed to read and write), Commanders of the Faithful (leaders), Angels (protect the Handmaids) and so on. Atwood gives subtle hints about the workings of the Republic of Gilead (the new name of the USA after the fictional revolution) but they are not sufficient for one to understand Gilead society. As an appendix, there is a section called, "Historical Notes," which is an academic conference set in 2195 (approx. 150 years after the events of the novels) and some more details emerge. This section was probably the most interesting in the book. The novel is an interesting spin on 20th dysopia fiction. Its specific innovation is to emphasize the oppression of a specific set of persons (women). However, "Brave New World," by Aldous Huxley and "1984," by George Orwell are MUCH better dystopia novels.
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Summary: Disappointing dystopian "satire"
Review: Very disappointing after such epics as Life Before Man. The plot was complicated and character development was minimal. Disjointed prose made it difficult to read, as did the never ending time shifts. Atwood's ideas, although possibly relevant when the book was published, are now outdated in this post-feminist era. Surely the theme, although horrific, is not as bad as it seems? When their is a choice between sufferance of the living and the quality of life of future generations (and if there is to be one), surely this makes the issue undebatable. If you want to read the book, then good luck. The film version is also Ok, if unfaithful to the actual text. PREPARE TO BE SHOCKED, CONFUSED (AND SOMETIMES BORED)IF YOU READ THIS BOOKER PRIZE NOMINATED TOME. OTHER DYSTOPIC NOVELS ARE BETTER..........
Rating:
Summary: A Great Read
Review: The Handmaid's Tale is the story of Offred, one of the few fertile women left in the Republic of Gilead, a dystopia at its worst. Toxic waste has left population levels dangerously low and religious leaders have taken control of the country, using desperate measures to repopulate the Earth. Offred is one of the many "handmaids" who are forced to live with a commander and trys to conceive a child with him once a month. The book chronicles Offred's life as she is living with Commander Fred (hence "Of Fred"). Atwood wrote this novel at a time when there was the possibility of religious leaders establishing a theocracy. She portrays the havoc that can come about when a democracy loses its control over the people. Atwood does this extremely effectively. Since the whole book is through Offred's eyes, the one-person limited view point makes you use your imagination to fill in the gaps left by her lack of knowledge. The book isn't so extreme that it's unbelievable and is so descriptively written that it almost feels as if it the events already happened in history. It was truly a great read.
Rating:
Summary: Cunning manipulative middlebrow entertainment
Review: Whatever one might else say about Margaret Atwood, there is no doubt she's a professional. She is a skillful, cunning manipulative writer. But whereas other writers use modernist techniques to reach a deeper insight, Atwood uses them to evade fundamental questions. Here are two examples. 1) At one point Offred has a meeting with the chauffeur who will impregnate her because Offred's master, Fred, is sterile. Atwood provides three versions of this meeting which introduces a note of fashionable uncertainty while hiding her inability to discuss real intimacy. 2) At the end of the book, Offred is being taken away from Fred's house. It is not clear whether she is being liberated or arrested, and the book concludes with a pompous academic conference that does not clarify the matter. The conference is obviously a joke on Atwood's part. The problem I have is that Offred could not have written the account that concludes her story until after the events took place, and where she would have a reasonable idea of what happened to her. Atwood may find it intriguing to leave the matter in doubt, but a real political prisoner would not play this sort of modernist game. In general, Atwood's dystopia plays on women's fears, but does not enlighten or elucidate them. She chose an easy target in attacking American fundamentalism, whose illiberalism, parochialism and paranoia make them fair game. But in her account of making women victims she is subtly stacking the deck. She uses analogies from Nazism and slavery which, on second glance, are quite tendentious. For example the regime comes about because Congress and the Cabinet have been assasinated and a military regime claims it was done by foreign terrorists. But are Americans really quite that naive? The imposition of a misogynist state supposedly happens step by step, sort of like the path towards the Holocaust. But it is one thing for Germans to fail to realize the fate of 1% of their countrymen and for Americans to fail to recognize the fate of 50% of their own families. Likewise, it is hard to imagine any modern state that would want to dramatically shrink the workforce and cut the literacy rate in half. In Atwood's Gilead, women are forbidden to read, an idea which Atwood obviously got from slave code prohibitions against literacy. But this ignores the fact that American Evangelicalism prides itself on bringing the bible to the masses. To prevent women from reading the bible goes against their fundamental principles. Indeed, renaming the country is another "off" thing, given the intense patriotism of American Fundamentalists. And why would they rename the country "Gilead," as in "there is no balm in"? I can't help but note that Atwood does not take the demographic crisis Gilead faces with all due seriousness. After all, a 90%-95% sterility rate implies extinction. Most people would support conscription to fight off an enemy that would do that. Is conscripting women's wombs so really out of the question? It is at least an argument that should be taken more seriously. Finally Atwood does not deal with the fact that most churchgoers in Western countries are female. This brings in questions of complicity that Atwood simply ignores. Ultimately, this is middlebrow entertainment.
Rating:
Summary: Plain good literature
Review: I have read "The Handmaid's Tale" a number of times, both in English original and in Croatian translation (a pretty good one). First time I read it, it was because I have found it in a library of a Women's Study Centre in Zagreb, Croatia, so I expected it to be "feminist literature", and was therefore a bit cautious about it, thinking it would be some kind of pamphlet for women's liberation. Of course, I did not know anything about Margaret Atwood back then. First thing this book taught me is that M. Atwood is, above all, a great author, and that "The Handmaid's Tale" is a piece of plain good literature. The somewhat circular narrative centres around and is being told from the perspective of Offred, a woman living in Republic of Gilead, the dystopian, future theocracy established on the teritory of today's United States of America. Gilead's government is organized by a group of very specific religious fanatics, basing their theology on a couple of chapters from the Old Testament, specifically the story about Sarah, Abraham's wife, who could not bear children, and therefore had given Abraham her handmaid, Hagar, to concieve children with her. Also written in that chapter is God's command to Hagar to completely submit to her mistress, and Abraham's observation that Sarah is to do whatever she pleases with her handmaid. That is the point from which the treatment of handmaids is derived in the Republic of Gilead. As the increasingly polluted land caused infertility withing majority of women, the fertile ones, especially those who have been either married to divorced men (theocracy of Gilead does not recognize divorce), or single, but not virgins, are taken as "handmaids" to be awarded to high ranking families without children. Offred has been given to the family of The Commander, one of the highest ranking officials of Gilead, married to Serena Joy, a bitter and slightly desillusioned fanatic. Her narrative focuses on describing daily routines in their household, her experiences and her memories of a past, normal life, with a husband and a daughter. Apart from political description of Gilead's ideology (which is given masterfully, without unneccessary and boring descriptions, yet with frightening details), the main value of this book lies in Offred's introspection. She is a person completely determined by her biological function as a woman and a child-bearer, completely deprived of any other individual merrits or rights. The way Offred deals with that is beautifully portrayed; sometimes in a flow that resembles free-association ("It's strange now, to think about having a job. Job. It's a funny word. It's a job for a man. Do a jobbie, they'd say to children, when they were being toilet-trained. Or of dogs: he did a job on the carpet...The Book of Job."), sometimes completely ripped-off of any emotions, yet almost physically hurtful with recognition and fear of it possibly coming true. Granted, Margaret Atwood did write about a woman deprived of her rights in a male-dominated world here, but I don't believe it is a feminist pamphlet. It's a book about human condition, as any other good book; talking about what people are capable of doing, good or bad. Another note. This, of course, is a speculative fiction, a dystopian one, like Huxley's "Brave New World" or Orwell's "1984". However, I have heard many people say that this one is the least probable one in terms of ever becoming a reality, and therefore fruitless in its message. To these people, I would recommend reading some news from Afghanistan, since Talibans took over.
Rating:
Summary: Please keep your opinions out of my mouth.
Review: As a male, I must take execption to the characterization of some reviewers that women will love this book, and men will find it boring and pointless. This book was entrancing from beginning to end (and the end couldn't have been better). If this book didn't frighten and disturb you, then please do the world a favor and stay home in front of the TV next election. Speaking of elections, in honor of our new president I bought 10 copies of this book to give to all my friends for Christmas.
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