Fine social and psychological study. Good writing, compelling story. Worryingly believable. It makes you stop and think about giving your rights for granted. It also describes well how values and feelings are influenced by the context and how human beings adaptation skills may become a mixed blessing, when the environment you learn to adapt to is hell. It only missed the fifth star because it did not blow me completely off my shoes. However, big standing ovation to the ending and Historical Notes (they were more chilling to me than all the preceding horrors. It must have been the lightheartedness) and to the absence of heroic redeeming deeds as plot-resolution device.
Teen feet over the other dystopian novels in the same vein.
Should be read in schools all over the planet. ( )

I first read The Handmaid's Talein about 1990 I think. I would have been around 18, in my first year of uni. I've been wary of re-reading it because I remember being so blown away by it. I was scared that this amazing, brilliant, intelligent and thoroughly unnerving book wouldn't stand up to the decades. My fears were groundless. Margaret Atwood's depiction of a theocratic dictatorship, where a woman's value is determined by her sexual conduct and capacity to breed, as is beautifully written and as scary as it ever was. ( )

When I first read this book in the 1980s, I was a literature and writing major in college. The entire canon and political field of my studies was about feminism but it was the kind of feminism that warns about men taking over and restricting the movement of women in society. This book fell right in line with that way of thinking. It seemed to show a world that could so easily happen if men are put in charge and make decisions. However, this view is now outdated and overly simplistic. But those early ideas shaped the way I read this book several other times in the past decades.

After watching some of the Hulu series and feeling less than enamored with it because of some emotional connection to the novel, I decided I should reread the book with the intention of giving the series another go. What I felt when reading the book this time is that there were generations of women absolutely complicit in the rise of Gilead. The narrator's mother takes her young daughter to and participates in a book burning. She does this in some twisted sense of making the world a better place by removing items that denigrate women (namely pornographic magazines). But what seems to have happened is that in an effort to be "more feminist" the door was opened and the proverbially slippery slope was created. From there things quickly escalate and an unwillingness to create waves allows the events of the novel to unfold.

What is really important about this book is perhaps reading it in the context of women's recent history. Although this is a book by a Canadian author, we cannot dismiss US history as that is where this novel is presumably set. After all, abortion only became a right about 50 years ago AND into the 1980s women still needed a spouse to get bank loans and credit cards in some instances. Without vigilance, we can so easily slip backwards in the strides that women have made as is evidenced by the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, which is actually about so much more than just abortion. And there are plenty of women who supported that action which only undermines any real feminism. We run the risk of losing sight and control of the very things that make women so unique from men. ( )

Hier hatte ich die Serie zuerst gesehen, und habe dann das Buch gelesen. Und obwohl es natürlich an manchen Stellen Differenzen gibt, hat das überraschend gut funktioniert.
Die Geschichte ist sehr beklemmend, gerade auch mit Blick in die heutigen USA, wo es glaube ich noch mehr religiösen Fanatismus gibt als bei uns. Ich hoffe, dass es niemals so weit kommt. Aber ich glaube durchaus, dass das Szenario nicht unmöglich ist. Dass über lange Zeit die meisten Menschen sagen "Das betrifft mich nicht, also lass die anderen mal machen". Und dann überrascht und wehrlos sind, wenn tatsächlich so ein gesellschaftlicher Umbruch passiert...
Ich finde das Buch sehr beängstigend, spreche aber trotzdem - oder gerade deshalb - eine klare Leseempfehlung aus! ( )

Good dystopian story ( )