The Handmaid’s Tale

I did not expect to be particularly impressed with this book going into it, because I thought it might have been overhyped recently due to attention it garnered as a result of the current political climate. But it turns out I was impressed, after all. What a great read. It’s eerie. It’s frightening. It’s engaging. It’s believable.

The imagined dystopian future truly does feel more relevant today than it was forty years ago. Politicians and other public figures openly advocating for the kinds of traditional values (fewer working women, more children, more men as decision-makers, less secularity, more Christianity) that prompted the fictional creation of Gilead are increasingly mainstream in the real world, not to mention the massive popularity of social media trad-wives, who are all-too-similar to pre-Gilead Serena Joy in their tactics of building profitable careers while preaching the virtues of a life focused on motherhood and homemaking.

I will say, though, it feels like cheating to read a book like this after I’ve already watched the television series (only saw the first couple of seasons), because I didn’t have to imagine the whole fictitious world from scratch. It probably would have been a more challenging book to read without the show, considering how the narrative sort of starts in the middle and then details get filled in along the way via flashbacks.

Nevertheless, compliments to the show for doing a great job bringing the characters to life and staying well-aligned to the book. Other than the mistake the show made of creating a wonderfully racially diverse Gilead, because it makes no sense that a society as sexist as Gilead is going to be some progressive oasis for racial equality.

Anyway, it’s hard to know if I would have felt differently about the characters had they not already been fully formed in my mind, but I was impressed with how emotionally connected I was to the characters considering they were mostly depicted with muted personalities as a function of living in Gilead. I thought Moira, especially, really shined in her sections of dialogue.

Book author: Margaret Atwood