The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is set in the dystopian US sometime after the 1980’s. I know that everyone else is raving about it, especially after the Hulu series, but in short, I didn’t like it. Not just because it was about the subjugation of women, or the big brother state or even the use of quasi-religion to enslave women.
What I didn’t like was the narrative itself. I don’t mind if stories skip back and forth in time as a plot device to keep something from the reader (i.e. murder mysteries) but there really wasn’t a point to it in this story. It seems like she is telling it after the fact, at least according to some of her recollections, so why wouldn’t she tell it in a linear fashion? The jumping around of the narrative made it choppy and hard to follow at times, and made the story less powerful, in the long run. To have a clear account of a society’s descent into government control would have been very powerful, especially in the times we are living in now. Not including it, made the story less plausible, more like a fairytale.
Don’t get me wrong, I won’t soon be forgetting some of the uglier aspects of the book, all the power plays by people who really had no power, woman against woman, worker against employer, teacher (Aunt) against their students, even house servant against the handmaid. The worst was government authorities hanging executed criminals on a wall around the city, with a letter on them designating their particular religion, or dissenting opinion. I also believe that a lot of what she says is possible in the world we live in today. And sadly it has the theme that all great literature seems to rest on, “Man has dominated Man to his harm.” -Ecclesiastes 8:9
Contentment and French Fries 