5 Stars for The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

After watching the Hulu series, I became obsessed with this story - again. I read the book over seventeen years ago. My daughter was not born yet and this year she will be eighteen. Anyways, I read it so long ago I couldn't remember how it ended. When I picked the book back up, my intention was to skip to the ending, but I was drawn into the writing - again, lots of active verbs, dynamic imagery reminding me of a city of ashes contrasting great big Gatsby parties. Of course, the parties were the past, the protagonist, Offred was absent from.

Another clever tactic, Atwood gets rid of quotation marks. This is particularly clever for me as I read because the writing flows into the somber mood of going on forever like Nick Drake's Pink Moon. Atwood is a fantastic writer, but not everyone loves her style. I've never cared for Henry James and all of his misplaced modifiers, but I recognize good writing when I see it and I can appreciate him. Still, I can see some folks hating the loss of the quotation marks, but when you are a great writer and know the rules - you can change them.

Picasso did with Cubism. Faulkner did with the typical linear format, and Walt Whitman did it with free verse. Many things are possible when a good story is at the heart of the writing. And this is a good dystopian tale. I feel there are a great many people who feel this to be impossible, and on some level they could be correct. However, there is the nugget of truth that makes this plausible and very, very scary. That same nugget was found in 1984 and Animal Farm. And in real life, women are often envious of other women who can have children when they cannot. This green-eyed-monster lurks in every dark corner where freedom is at stake.

Several years ago, my grandmother was at my house and my husband came in and made himself a sandwich with a glass of milk. Grandma said, "He makes his own sandwich." And for sometime she stared at him. In The Handmaid's Tale, Luke, Offred's husband from the past, is cooking and Offred's mother remarks that women have come a long way. I don't think Atwood forgets that in this book even in a story where women lose their rights - there was a time they had them. It is that understanding and contrast that makes this story good. They had so much to lose.

This book has over 66 thousand reviews and some of them are 1 point stars, but what I find interesting about those 1 and 2 stars are the length of the reviews. Five star reviews are great, but if you make a reader write a five page 1 star - that says something about great writing, great stories, and great characters.

Another praise to her was her painting of the men in the book as thin as paper dolls. If a woman in Offred's position saw them as more, then that could make them human. I don't feel the men were thin, but Offred could not afford to see them as human. She could not fall in love. She could not want. She could not hope.

I highly recommend this book!