I first picked this book up in high school. It probably wasn't the right time for me to attempt it. I was a reader of historical fiction, and I didn't think too much about the future. So I read a chapter or two and put it down.
I bought it a month ago. it had been recommended as one of the 1000 books I should read before I die. While I do have issues with that list at this point--I've read 48 books on the list and most of my favorite authors are not on it--I think it was a book worth reading.
The book is the story of Offred, a woman who is a forced surrogate in a post-modern incarnation of the US, Gilead. Women have had their rights taken away from them, and are either Unwomen, (the untouchables who have been banished), Jezebels (the whores), Marthas (the workers), Wives, or Handmaidens (women who have babies for the Commanders and the Wives. She flashes back to her life before, when she was married to Luke, and they had a daughter. We find out she tried to escape with them, and the child was taken, Luke's fate is unknown. She has three chances to have a baby or she'll be sent to the colonies as an Unwoman. Sex is not about love, it has turned into a bizarre ritualized threesome. Offred must learn how to negotiate this world for her survival.
It was a thought-provoking book, deeply upsetting. I'd like to think Gilead could never happen here, but passages in the book do ring eerily familiar. They discuss how the leaders used fear of Muslims to take away the people's rights. And that people twisted the interpretation of the Bible to suit their needs. At first, the changes don't affect the characters, they figure out how to work around them. People die, but it's no one that Offred knows. She states they thought it could never happen to them, to people they knew. "We lived in the gaps."And that works til Offred becomes the oppressed for being a woman married to a divorced man. How far are we away from her?
How would I react if I were in her situation, my life and prospects dependant on a man who, we find out later, was probably sterile? Forced to be meek and mild, never knowing love. It doesn't seem like anyone LIKED the situation. The Commander can't view the living arrangement as just for procreation, Serena Joy harbors jealousy, although it's hard to imagine jealousy of Offred's position. Even the Handmaidens seem to look for release, whether in killing those who wrong them in organized Particicutions, or in dreaming of getting out. I don't know if it would be tolerable.
I can't say this was the best book I've ever read, but I'm still thinking about it. That must mean it's a story worth reading.
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