<b>Now a Hulu Original Series, premiering in April</b><br><br><i>The Handmaid's Tale</i> is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men in its population.<br><br> The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order. In condensed but eloquent prose, by turns cool-eyed, tender, despairing, passionate, and wry, she reveals to us the dark corners behind the establishment's calm facade, as certain tendencies now in existence are carried to their logical conclusions. <i>The Handmaid's Tale </i>is funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing. It is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and a tour de force. It is Margaret Atwood at her best.
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Perfect and prescient for these times. READ it.
I will admit - Over the years, 'Handmaid' was one of those books everyone had told me just HAD to be read - but with the clear discomfort they'd show in saying that, I always thought - Nope; not for me. I'm just not one for the whole dystopian thing; I need to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Fast forward to last week - this book being required for my daughter's Eng Lit class, and sitting available while I was at loose ends in a Starbucks for several hours - I thought, Why not?... and how glad I am, that I had those few hours. Wow. I was gone, hook line and sinker, from the first page on. Handmaid is set in, yes, a dystopian future in which women's place in the world has been subverted, through various events which resonate awfully closely with current times. The story picks up at the moment when Offred (a concatenation of her "owner's" name and her position in this society) is assigned to a new home in a city in America, for reasons that become all too clear within a few short pages. Her experiences within this new environment, interwoven with her recollection of her past before this societal apocalypse, unveil themselves like the layers of an onion - a never-ending interweaving of recollections and current experiences which, in their close parallels with so much that seems to be happening in our current world, make it not just an uncomfortable read, as so many other reviewers have said; but an eerily prescient one for these times. I could go on about that aspect of what makes this such a valuable read for any person over the age of 10 years old, but I'm quite sure many of the 1,000 + prior reviewers will have spoken to that far more effectively than I ever could. But for me, what makes this book so great is the Voice that the protagonist gains as she struggles in such a harsh, unforgiving, and shockingly cruel environment - the brutal honesty with which that voice speaks to the horrors and impossible personal choices that any of us would have to make, f...
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