The Handmaid's Tale: Review

We all have that list of books that we know we "should" have read before.  The ones that everyone goes on and on about or refer to in high brow literary conversations.  Especially when your job centres around reading and books and literature (now that I have thought of it I think this may be another blog post in the making!)."The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood was one of those books for me that I had always wanted to read but just never really made the time for it. In June I started watching the TV series and loved the first episode so much that I knew I just had to read it.  I was delighted when the book club I am part of selected it as one of their reads and it did not disappoint.

This one of very few 5 star reviews I have left on Goodreads. Atwood skilfully built a society called Gilead which was created when a Christian group kills the American congress members and President and take over America in a bid to create a military run dictatorship.  The Handmaids are a group of women whose sole purpose is for recreation.  The society has faced a decline in fertility which is something that the new dictatorship believe has to be conquered.  The Handmaids are distributed to the ruling class families who use them in attempt to make them surrogate mothers for the family.  The story is told in the first person by the main character, Offred, a Handmaid who is assigned to her third family.

Firstly, the setting was dealt with in such a complete, encompassing amount of description throughout.  I felt so submerged and involved with the novel that when I stopped I had to remind myself that it wasn't really happening.  The society was not so far-fetched that it was unimaginable, instead it created an alternate realistic society with flawed characters, powerful themes and that creates a connection to the reader which is maintained all the way through.

Offred is all the more realistic for the flashbacks to the times she was happy with her family and to the start of the revolution.  Offred's past is a painful reminder of what things used to be like.  It is all the worse because she knows what she is missing.  Offred is inspired by a friend, Moira, who is a powerful woman on a mission to break out of the oppression she faces as a woman under the new regime.  The female characters we meet throughout the novel all have their own ways to try and break away from the rules of the regime.

Individuality, or the importance of individuality, is explored through the many ways that the woman are categorised and forced to leave behind their individuality and become a collective group of women without any sort of individual thought.  All of the Handmaids are identified by their distinct red dresses and white hats which block out their vision preventing them from seeing or being seen.  The educational centre run by the Aunts is a facility which teaches Handmaids how they should conduct themselves.  It is a harrowing experience for the Handmaids who are cruelly and severely
punished for the slightest wrong-doing.  At the centre they are taught to behave and conduct themselves in exactly the same way as every other Handmaid.

For me one of the most disturbing descriptions were of the "unbabies" or "shredders" which were the babies born with defects or physical disabilities.  There is no telling what actually happens to these babies but it is known that they are not kept.  The society does not use the modern facilities for testing pre-natal health in babies, it is forbidden to conduct health checks before birth.  The Handmaids live in fear of giving birth to an "unbaby" which is terrifying because it harks back to days gone by where we did not have the facilities that we do now to check the health of babies. I feel this is something that made me appreciate the health services available to us that we just take for granted at the moment.

This book really got under my skin. I felt like it was so real that I truly became immersed within the setting, characters and events.  This is a testament to the writing of Atwood as I usually find it difficult to engage with dystopian literature.  This is far and above my favourite dystopian novel that I have read to date.

Next up: Popular books that I have not yet read - TBR!

Meg x