The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
★★★★★ | Science Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I was slow to pick up this classic dystopian novel, but now I’m glad I waited. Had I read this five years ago, it would have struck me as merely imaginative. But the current political environment, coupled with a recent study of history, particularly the rise of Nazi Germany, made the premise of this book seem all too plausible. In fact, there’s very little here that isn’t drawn from some dark period in our human history, which adds to the novel’s prophetic feel.
I had forgotten what a gifted writer and storyteller Margaret Atwell is. Her lush descriptions of Offred’s world feel cinematic, as if her obscured eyesight transforms her vision into a panning camera.
…Given our wings, our blinkers, it’s hard to look up, hard to get the full view, of the sky, of anything. But we can do it, a little at a time, a quick move of the head, up and down, to the side and back. We have learned to see the world in gasps.
