Rating: 
Summary: A confused feminist view of the future
Review: Only a confused and paranoid feminist could come up with such an story. This book (set in the not too distant future) is actually nothing more than an attack on conservative Christian values. The idea that right wing conservatives would turn all females into slaves if given the chance is absurd. I will give Atwood credit for creativity. However, A Handmaid's Tale is only worth reading if you actually enjoy ridiculous science fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: "Nightmare world" painted by Margaret Atwood
Review: Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale is a dark and gloomy portrayal of the United States in the not-so-distant future, when a totalitarian government takes over all aspects of life. Atwood covers controversial issues including feminism, abortion, violence against women, pornography, environmental issues, bisexuality, ethics of cloning, racism, anti-feminism, militant nationalism, and religious differences.
The governmental structure of Gilead, including its state religion, is horrifyingly built around one goal: the control of reproduction. Controlling women's bodies can succeed only by controlling the women themselves, so Gilead's political order requires the subjugation of women. They strip women of the right to vote, the right to hold property or jobs, and the right to read. Women are a "national resource," Gilead likes to say, but they really mean that women's ovaries and wombs are national resources. Women cease to be treated as individuals, with independent selves, rather, they are seen potential mothers, leasing them to high-class families.
Biblical terminology is revealed when Gilead theocracy develops its own words to give the state control over the sentiments and ideas people can express. The vocabulary makes you think and relate religious features to characters and places in the novel. The people of Gilead must carry on conversations within the suffocating confines of officially sanctioned language. Saying the wrong thing can lead to a swift death, so people watch what they say, thereby subordinating their power of speech to the power of the state.
The main character, Offred, is exposed to the consequences of the reversal of women's rights. She craves happiness and freedom from the lock down society she now has to bow down to. The consistency of her sadness is painful and the reader is reminded of her dreadful lifestyle when compared to her past memories of normalcy. To escape her struggles with the corrupt government, she attempts to run away but gets caught. Previous handmaids have committed suicide to end their misery or to avoid getting caught having an affair with another man.
Its scary to even think of this could actually happen in America but we can relate some events that could lead to this state ruling. The extremes in the novel are a little hard to believe but it makes women now relieved and thankful that this is not how life is. The female is too strong willed and not a pushover; I do not see in the near future anything like this happening.
Rating: 
Summary: Astounding and Brilliant, as always
Review: After reading Surfacing and The Blind Assassin, The Handmaid's Tale was my last book for my senior paper. My teacher assured me it was a page-turner, but I couldn't get into it. Then, around page 190 or 200, I couldn't put it down (and literally didn't until I'd read the last page).
Atwood says the book is not science fiction, and I'd say that anyone who calls it that would be crazy. The idea is shocking, but brilliant as Atwood always is, and the book, while terrifying, is not a synical as one might believe.
Read it, you'll love it; I assure you (whoever you are)!
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and well written
Review: Margaret Atwood is a master of the modern novel, and THE HANDMAID'S TALE is no exception to the rule. Brilliant, tightly knit, and fast moving, I recommend it to anyone looking for an entertaining, moving, rawly emotional book about a world so easily derived from our own.
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Summary: One of the greatest warnings for the future of America
Review: Many reviewers have said this can never happen in America.
They have been disillusioned. It is those women who say that this many never can happen who are the "Aunts" of this book.
Many aspects of this book remind us of the woman's life in many Muslim nations. People say that will never happen with Christianity, please remember that there are fundamentalist nutsos in every religion. In this book The President, Congress, Government were eliminated, killed. This book makes every woman treasure the freedoms and choices she has. This book is also a warning for men. Many posters on this board suggest men wouldn't care about this novel----how many men do you know that would stand for not being able to make love to a woman, look at a woman, talk to a woman, touch a woman?
I urge every woman, man and teen to read this book. Open your mind. Open your heart.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing, but Unlikely
Review: As a female conservative, I approached this book with a great deal of trepidation, knowing of its reputation as a parable for the left. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the writing and story-telling (and for this I give it three stars) but the overall quality of the novel is marred by the blatantly circumscribed view of Christianity presented in the book as well as the lack of her distopia's relation to reality. One of the most important tenets of Christian Doctrine is to respect the individual, and for Atwood to portray the supposedly Christian society of Gilead as having zero respect for individual rights and to be all-concerned with status and dominance does not ring true in the slightest.Several of the other reviewers argue that Atwood's vision is not at all farfetched because of the state of women in Islamic countries. Exactly! I had the same thought in the back of my head the whole time I was reading this book. It is so-called Islamic countries in the Middle East and not Western nations where women are limited to lives as wives and mothers and where the sanctity of the individual is not respected. Had Atwood set her novel in present-day Iran or Iraq, it would ring true in a way that setting it in near-future-day America does not. We have a centuries-old tradition of respecting individual rights in America. Atwood's suggestion that we are on the brink of negating centuries of human progress in the way we view individual rights, in the one place in the world (the West, that is) where they are consistently respected, stinks of feminist fearmongering. And her constant harping on abortion "rights" gets really old, especially when contrasted with actual evils--rape, slavery, torture--perpetrated on the "handmaids" in her novel. Ultimately, when we're judging the value and insight of a distopian novel such as this one, we need to look at how relevant the story is for the society it claims to portray. I think Brave New World is a wonderful book because despite being written over 50 years ago, it was accurately able to pinpoint troubling aspects of our society, that have grown more troubling in the ensuing years--our materialism, hedonism, lack of respect for life, failure to create lasting relationships, etc. The Handmaid's Tale fails to fulfill this crucial function. Atwood may think that by pinpointing, say, opposition to abortion rights as a "problem" in America, she's right in positing that the Republic of Gilead is our next logical step as a society. But by taking that philosophical leap, she's entirely glossing over the message of her opposition (those who want to protect the unborn) whose message has nothing to do with enslaving women, and everything to do with respecting human dignity. I recommend this book to those on the right, if only to gain some insight into the lefty feminist mindset, and because the story is compelling, if entirely misplaced in historical context.
Rating:
Summary: Margaret Atwood Ahead of Her Time
Review: Eerie to have so many facets of modern life in this book. ATM/Check cards, terrorist attacks, righ wing-ed christian agendas, feminist backlashes of the worst kind, and the controversy over the burqa. Amazing. Atwood writes golden poetry even in her prose. Stark and bleak with the reality that sexism and misogyny will prevail in all forms of partriarchy, no duh, huh? But Atwood delivers a fluid, harrowing tale of the less than ideal future with women protected as Marthas, Econowives, Handmaids, and wives. Of course, there's the Unwomen and the women used as underground sex slaves by the highly righteous and pure men of cloth in Gilead. Accurate futurism. Read this and draw lines from the novel to the present. Highly recommend. The movie does no justice.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful writing and very thought-provoking subject matter
Review: I couldn't put this book down. Read it in 2 sittings, only interrupted by a night's sleep. The concepts are not so far fetched -- look at modern-day middle eastern fundamentalist countries -- and makes you think about liberties we all take for granted on a daily basis, and hope to God that our government and constitution can be upheld for all time to come. The stream of conscience narration style is fabulous. I found the writer's prose, as always, top notch. There are some truly beautiful passages, which I read again and again, just for the pleasure of them. A classic, must read book.
Rating:
Summary: My favourite Margaret Atwood book
Review: The Handmaid's Tale was the first Atwood book I read and it remains my favourite. As I was reading the book, I was by turns fascinated and infuriated. Fascinated by the story and infuriated by the treatment of the handmaids. The Handmaid's Tale follows the main character through her new life as a handmaid to a powerful government/army man and his wife. The couple have been unable to conceive a child of their own so they have been given a handmaid, whose sole purpose is to conceive and give birth to the man's child. Through flashbacks we discover how the handmaid got to be in this situation and the life she used to have before she became this "non-person". Like all Atwood novels, the Handmaid's Tale contains many rich layers of meaning and symbols. It's the sort of book that I could easily read two or three times and come away with something new each time.
Rating:
Summary: A really compelling read
Review: I thought this book was really interesting. A friend had told me it was a little like "The Red Tent," but that was not a good comparison. Imagine waking up tomorrow without civil rights, without your job, without your savings. This book offers an insightful look into what the women of Afghanistan must have felt when the Taliban took control. It will make you see your daily life in an entirely new way. On the other hand, the fate of the women who fought against the societal change will leave you raging. I highly recommend this book to all women readers.
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