With the recent release of television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, I made a realization: I am a Canadian who has never read anything by Margaret Atwood before. And she a national treasure!!! You’d think I would have at least come across something in my school curriculum, especially given that I even studied English as my minor in university. Really the only prominent Canadian author I had as assigned reading was Alice Munro. That seems… odd to me. But in any case, here we are […]
Terrifyingly timely
There’s been a whole bunch of reviews posted for this book already, so I’m not going to spend a lot of time recapping the plot in my own words. Goodreads can help me out here: Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to the food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her […]
Glad I’m Not In Gilead
The odds are good that you’ve already read this book, so I don’t really need to tell you what it’s about. But on the off-chance that you haven’t even heard of it, let’s just say that it’s a page from a future nightmare, a dystopian society where a woman’s role is either a housekeeper, a wife, or a handmaid. Women in this world don’t have jobs outside the house, and have no money of their own. If the woman is the wife of a wealthy man, […]
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.”
After an unintentional series of memoirs, I began The Handmaid’s Tale on International Women’s Day- it seemed appropriate- and couldn’t put it down. Atwood tells a “speculative fiction” story set in the not too distant future where fertility has dwindled and religious fanatics control the government. After they overthrew the government the Sons of Jacob established a theological dictatorship called Gilead. In this new world fertile women, handmaids, are sent to powerful men’s homes if their wives have not been able to produce a child. Offred, literally […]