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Handmaid's Tale (Paperback: Anchor Books: 320 pages)

$0.58 - $13.45
4.5 out of 5.0 stars 2 Ratings (2 Reviews)

Product Details: Handmaid's Tale

Author:Margaret Atwood, Mary Dean Atwood
Format:Paperback: Anchor Books: 320 pages.
Publisher:Anchor (04/01/1998)
ISBN:038549081X
ISBN13:9780385490818
Reading Level:

Other Available Formats: Handmaid's Tale

User Reviews: Handmaid's Tale

  • Overall:

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    Plot:

    Author:

    The Handmaid's Tale

    By CarolynMJ1977  May 11, 2007

    Pros: It was really a good book

    Cons: It was scary!!!

    I couldn't quite figure out what was going on when I was reading it at first. And then when I got to the sex part - My mouth DROPPED open. OH my gosh. I hope this NEVER EVER happens to society. You have to read this book. I am so glad for the wom...en who have fought for us to get us this far. Its a futuristic book, but its really grounded and really good. READ it! Read more Less

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    Plot:

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    Orwellian Slavery

    By Aramink  Oct 6, 2006

    Pros: Beautifully written, enthralling story

    Cons: None

    Imagine a world in which men, and never women, hold all of the power, all of the decision-making authority. Imagine that women are wives without power, servants, concubines, and are not allowed to speak to one another, ever. This isn't the Stepf...ord Wives. It's even more evil and insidious. Our heroine has a name, but it changes depending upon which man has use of her body. She is a Handmaid, which is essentially a sex slave. Women in her time do not become pregnant easily, and since before the new order took over she had a child, she is considered fertile. Once a month she suffers the attentions of the man of her house, while his wife looks on in condescending disgust. If she becomes pregnant she will be elevated to a position of respect, even though her child will be taken away from her. Her other child was taken away, maybe even killed. She believes the husband she loves was killed. She believes she will be killed if she resists, or if she fails to conceive. Even the master of her household, a high ranking official, does not follow the harash rules strictly. He would be subject to prosecution if those in power knew of his illicit Scrabble games with his Handmaid. He takes the Handmaid to what would appear to be a BDSM 'munch' where she makes valuable contacts with an underground women's movement, unknown to her master. Before this government, they were allowed to be educated, to move about freely, to marry the men they loved, to think. Now they are objects, and nothing more. The women manage to speak in hushed voices, daring to hope that their world can somehow be returned to them. Will a rebellion be successful? Will it even be possible? Margargaret Atwood's incredible imagination and range is evident in this dark novel. The most terrifying part of the whole story is that one can imagine it actually happening. Read more Less

Pro Reviews: Handmaid's Tale

  • Enhanced Muze Note

    A gripping suspense tale, THE HANDMAID'S TALE is an allegory of what results from a politics based on misogyny, racism, and anti-Semitism. What makes the novel so terrifying is that Gilead both is and is not the world we know....The depth and complexity of Atwood's critique of contemporary society are stunning....[A] stark, even gruesome book, but it does not yield to despair and neither does its author.

  • Enhanced Muze Note

    If THE HANDMAID'S TALE doesn't scare one, doesn't wake one up, it must be because it has no satiric bite....The most conspicuous lack, in comparison with the classics of the fearsome-future genre, is the inability to imagine a language to match the changed face of common life....Characterization in general is weak..., which maybe makes it a poet's novel....It seems harsh to say again of a poet's novel--so hard to put down, in part so striking--that it lacks imagination, but that, I fear, is the problem.

Publisher Notes: Handmaid's Tale

  • In the world of the near future, who will control women's bodies?
    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 food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable.
    Offred can remember the days before, when she lived and made love with her husband Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now....
    Funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing, "The Handmaid's Tale" is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and tour de force.

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