Here's a story that describes the essentials of what life would be like for women if Islamic fundamentalists took over our civilization. Long robes are mandatory, as are some kind of facial covering. Education is forbidden. Women exist for the pleasure and procreation of the men who control them. In short, pretty much like the situation that prevailed under the Taliban. Mark Steyn makes a pretty convincing case for that being Europe's inevitable future, but Margaret Atwood places the action here in North America.

I'm being flippant, of course. The grim future Atwood presents is supposed to be the result of not standing up to the conservatives, with their Moral Majority. I see it was published in 1985, during Reagan's second term, and the narrative tells us that the utter collapse of all that's good occurred at about that point.

UPDATE: Before She Sleeps, by Bina Shah, hits closer to the mark, I think.

Since then, unless I'm living in an alternative universe, life has continued along more or less as before. This year it looked for a while as if a woman might even become president.

So much for Atwood's dire predictions of the future.

Again and again in writing reviews of books, I run into this situation in which somebody uses fiction to advance some harebrained political view. It's getting quite old. It's even worse when the author's aim is so poor. Every culture faces threats, but the Christian Right is and always has been pretty far down the list. A coworker lent me this one, so at least I spent no money on it. But I regret the time wasted.

As a story, the narrative improves somewhat toward the end: Things build toward a climax, there's foreshadowing that something dreadful is about to occur, and clues provided lead one to imagine what is likely to happen. But then the author just drops the ball. When the story ends we don't know for sure if the protagonist was betrayed or rescued. I'm at a loss for understanding why it was handled that way.

Anti-utopian writing is an honorable genre. As far as I know, however, nothing has approached those two classics, 1984 and Brave New World. In this case the comparison is pathetic.

UPDATE: Before She Sleeps, by Bina Shah, hits closer to the mark, I think.

There are many lessons in the bible that are supposed to be "do not do this" stories. One of such is the story of Abraham's wife, Sarah, who was promised by God that she would have a baby. Tired of waiting, she sent her maid in to get pregnant by her husband, and he had a son named Ishmael. Later, Sarah finally had that son that was promised by God, and named him Isaac. These two sons are the fathers of the Arabs and Jews, respectively. So, we all know how well that worked out.

In this book, the whole society is based upon the idea of using "handmaids" as vehicles to have children for wealthy married people who couldn't conceive. These handmaids were forced into service when this crazy religious group took over society and started oppressing women in ways that are crazy to us, but are actually going on in the present day world (Saudi Arabia, Taliban).

The story is written as if it were transcribed from a verbal diary account of a handmaid who had previously been happily married with a child and had a job. Everything was lost to her and she was indoctrinated and forced into this terrible position. There is such a feeling of utter helplessness in her words, along with the kind of despondency that comes when someone has lost all hope. It is easy for us to read it and wonder why she didn't rebel or rail against the system, but she was a survivor and suffering from major trauma. The government never allowed anyone to get comfortable so that hope could slip in by having a wall where there were dissenters hung each day. She lived in a state of shock and fear. Atwood does an amazing job of making these feelings so visceral that you are raging against the injustices happening to these people.

The book is very dark, very bleak, very depressing, and doesn't have a happy ending. But, it seems to me that it is an important read because we must remember our sisters who do live under veils, that are not allowed to drive cars or vote or go out alone, and are treated like nothing but unclean animals that are only necessary for procreation. Until they are free, we can never believe that this book is just some trivial work from a crazy feminist.

12/13/24: One thing people on the right have been saying to the left is "don't overreact." Here's a bit of American news for you to see if you agree:

South Carolina GOP Reintroduces Bill to Punish People Getting Abortions With Death Penalty:

https://truthout.org/articles/sc-gop-...

11/8/24: I have heard from others that "Goodreads should not be a place for politics," and yet Margaret Atwood and George Orrwell would not agree. Trump's victory has unleashed already a storm of misogyny, emboldening his Project 2025 architects and some of his incel/misogynist followers. Nick Fuentes, a graduate of Lyons Township High School near my home west of Chicago, has one of the most popular tweets on X this week: "Your body. My choice. Forever." Books are weapons against lies, misogyny, hatred. If you think you want nothing to do with politics, you have lost that choice, unfortunately. You must get busy, not give up. One piece of good news is that 7 of 10 state referenda endorsed the right to abortion. I know abortion is a divisive issue, not simple; I have many friends I respect who agree with me on almost all issues except this one, but now a vast majority of the country supports a woman's right to choose.

Original review: “My name isn't Offred, I have another name, which nobody uses now because it's forbidden. I keep the knowledge of this name like something hidden, some treasure I'll come back to dig up, one day. This name has an aura around it, like an amulet, some charm that's survived from an unimaginably distant past. I lie in my single bed at night, with my eyes closed, and the name floats there behind my eyes, not quite within reach, shining in the dark.”

“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”—John Proctor, The Crucible, Arthur Miller

“The women in training to be handmaids whisper names across their beds at night. The names are ‘Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.’”

The main character of The Handmaid’s Tale has a name she has been given, and a tattooed number on her ankle. Both indicate male ownership. What is in a name? What are names and naming the world for?

The Handmaid’s tale is a dystopian novel, published in 1985, a work of speculative fiction and possibly dark satire (on tendencies in western culture Atwood was observing) set sometime in the near future where religious fundamentalists through a military takeover have established a totalitarian theocracy, The Republic of Gilead, exerting patriarchal control over women’s bodies.

“It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.”

Because environmental poisoning has supposedly reduced the birthrate to a near standstill, abortion is outlawed, and women who are known or suspected to be fertile are selected to become Handmaids. The idea of a "handmaid" is based on the biblical story of Rachel and her handmaid Bilhah, who had babies for the barren Rachel.

Other categories for women that we meet include “Marthas” that do the domestic work, “Aunts” that teach and enforce the system, and there are some (illegal) prostitutes or Jezebels, Unwomen (the unfertile) and some other underclass workers. Men include Commanders, “Eyes” (with responsibility for surveillance over primarily women), and so on, but men are not really the focus of this book. In the way of hegemony, women police themselves structurally and psychologically. They are very much the engine of this particular patriarchal system.

“You wanted a women’s culture. Well, now there is one.”

Yes, it’s a women’s culture, but it’s a distortion of communal values, anti-democratic, undermining the best interests of women. (And yes, I am well aware that an understanding of "women in America" has to acknowledge that more educated women voted for Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton) Just as the religious theocracy in the Republic of Gilead is a distortion of understandings of any religious texts.

Of-fred is a slave name that describes our main character’s function, her official identity. Societally that function is described as a kind of concubine, but our main character isn’t having any of that: She says she is not a concubine, but a tool; a "two legged womb." In the process of the establishment of Gilead, she had also been labeled a "wanton woman" because she had married a man who had once been divorced.

Some of the things I like about this "nasty" novel:

* I “like” Aunt Lydia, the overseer and principal propagandizer in this slave culture, and the cruelest character, the Nurse Rachit of the novel, even as cartoonish as she is. Men are not obviously mean or cruel. They can’t have pornography, they are killed for rape. They mainly just provide sperm for procreation; sex isn’t allowed for pleasure in Gilead. But it's the women whom we get to know in this book, and many of them are mean-spirited and dangerous and vicious. That’s interesting, and a consequence of patriarchy generally: Get women pitted against each other.

* Women—as with slaves in the nineteenth century in the U. S.—are not allowed to read; shop signs are icons. I think of a direct quote from 45’s 2016 victory speech: “I love the poorly educated." Literacy, education, is power, and the rich and powerful and misogynist and racist know it. They insist we invest tax money on “defense,” not education (for the poor, at least; if you have the money, you just can buy a place in a university for your kid, as we well know). Slaves in this country were not allowed to learn to read and write. There's a reason for that: Because literacy is power.

* I like the first surprise in the book, that The Commander wants to meet our hero clandestinely to play. . . Scrabble. I thought for a minute he might even become likable! But this is part of the satirical dimension of the book, calling attention to his access to language. They play a word game, surrounded by books she has no access to, initially. But he gets more sinister over time.

* I like it that the sexual politics are sufficiently complex in this book to include the recovery of desire (i. e., Nick), and queer characters, especially my favorite character, Moira, our main character's best friend, a lesbian.

* I like it that our main character was not mean to be seen as some kind of saint. I like the layers of complexity in her character. She’s not as resistant as Moira. She's not even that likable. She's us! She had chosen to be passive, apolitical, at first. What would we do if we were enslaved in such a system? Oh, it can't happen here; this is hyperbole. {Read Project 2025's map for women, and it is chilling. The far right intends a national abortion ban, no exceptions, and the end of contraception, end of medical intervention in miscarriages--see deaths in Texas and other places as ERs are afriad to treat dying women; this is not fake news].

* I like the links between patriarchy in this book and other related historical totalitarianism, such as that of Nazi Germany. People in Handmaid are daily murdered by the government for offenses, hung publicly, with lies spread about their offenses. Those hanged are left to rot against The Wall, as happened in concentration camps and throughout history to “teach lessons” or terrorize people into compliance.

* I’m interested that the title echoes Chaucer’s various Canterbury Tales. In related matters, there is one epigraph to the book that is from the satirist Jonathan Swift. There aren’t a lot of laughs in this book, but dystopian literature can surely be grounded in dark satire. I never laughed in reading this book, though.

* Religious fundamentalism/theocracy of all colors and shapes seems obviously relevant here. Does most organized religion favor the rights of men over women, even to the control of their bodies? (Yes.) Do the central theological texts of these religions tend to support male domination? (Maybe. Probably. If you are a fundamentalist, yes; if you are not, then a generous reading of something like the Bible, for instance, may leave space for women’s self-efficacy).

* I like it that there is a Mayday resistance forming, an underground network working to overthrow the Republic of Gilead.

* I like that the ending is ambiguous. Oh I guess I would “like” evidence of an unambiguously happy ending, but as a supporter of complex narratives, I like not knowing, of having this be the end of the narrative. So we can join the resistance! If the women had won, we might relax and feel good about the book. Whew, just a story, we can go on with our lives! But no, this nightmare is always possible.

* I like the focus on language control, which echoes 1984, and story:

“If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. But if it's a story, even in my head, I must be telling it to someone. You don't tell a story only to yourself. There's always someone else. Even when there is no one. Or there could be thousands.”

If the main character is telling a story, she is now telling it to us, who are reading this book, who can stop ignoring realities and thinking it can’t happen here. We have to remember that we have names and value what names and naming the world may mean for the possibility of democracy.

This is not to me a perfect book. Part of this imperfection has to do with the dystopian genre and some cartoonish dimensions I find in it, but on the whole I think this is well-written, a four star book. But I think, given its importance to the continuing present moment, that I have to call it a five star book, one that everyone should read, in the category of other important dystopian books such as 1984, books about freedom, the right to choose what we do or not do to our bodies.

We read this book in my Spring 2019 Teaching of Writing class and saw the first episode of the Hulu series based on the book and I was both impressed and even more deeply disturbed than I was i seeing the story than in reading it, but it looks really good. {Atwood wrote a sequel, The Testament.]

In June 2022: Woe is Roe, as the US of America turns to greater and greater control over women by the state, by men. Stand and fight and fund travel to states for women--especially poor women targeted by this reversal--so they can choose how they want to live. [And again, in 11/2024, 7 of 10 states endorsed a woman's right to make decisions about their own bodies]. Here is 538, in 5/22, making it clear that very very few Americans support the idea of abortion being illegal:

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...

This book is about observations. A lot of really boring observations.

Gilead is a fictional military state in the US where the birthrate is very low. This is caused by the atomic accident which led to infertility.
A totalitarian regime takes over where women only have a few rights and are divided into various groups. These include “maids” who serve as wives or rather as surrogate mothers for the high-ranked commanders.
The atmosphere of the dystopian story is brightened up by memories of the protagonist's earlier life.
This book is a highly political work that draws an archaic world, resulting in a fundamentalism. It describes an incredibly cruel, perfidiously structured world in which nobody is truly free.
The book describes a utopia of a totalitarian state in which the protagonist takes on the role of the "maid" and describes everything vividly from her perspective.
To understand the writing and narrative style of the author you need some time to adjust. For example the switch between present and past, which sometimes occurs several times within a paragraph.
I highly recommend this book if you are interested in older dystopian stories, whose scenarios are not far away from today's discussions.
In my opinion the basic idea of a social order as described in the book is very interesting.
On the other hand I did not get captivated by the writing style. The author concentrates on the describing of details on the side, such as decorations or lighting conditions.
For the first time I liked the series better than the actual book, because in the series the incidental aspects do not get much attention.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Υπέροχο και σκληρό βιβλίο,αμιγώς προειδοποιητικό για τον κίνδυνο που διατρέχει κάθε κοινωνία η οποια βρίσκεται σε πλήρη ηθική,ανθρωπιστική και οικονομική κρίση.

Επομένως,πρέπει να διαβαστεί απο όλους τις Έλληνες!!
Επίκαιρο και ταιριαστό στην νέα τάξη πραγμάτων που μας υποβάλουν αργά και βασανιστικά.

Η αλήθεια ειναι πως το βιβλίο ειναι μια μαύρη κόλαση ένας τρόπος να αντιληφθείς άμεσα τα σάπια και τερατώδη γνωρίσματα του πολιτισμού μας. Του σύγχρονου πολιτισμού. Ειναι βιβλίο φαντασίας που βρίσκεται πολύ κοντά στον ρεαλισμό. Δεν θα το χαρακτήριζα προφητικό αλλα το καμπανάκι κινδύνου χτυπάει επισταμένως στο μυαλό μου και το σκηνικό για το οποίο με προειδοποιεί δεν περιγράφεται με λέξεις,ειναι τρομακτικό.

Οι πρώτες σελίδες ξεκινούν αργά και κάπως δυσνόητα να σε προσκαλούν στον κόσμο της Πορφυρής δούλης.
Ένα τάγμα γυναικών αποκαλούνται πορφυρές δούλες οι οποίες κινούνται σαν μαριονέτες απο ένα θεοκρατικό δικτατορικό καθεστώς και μόνο σκοπό έχουν την τεκνοποίηση. Ολα αυτά συμβαίνουν στην "δημοκρατία"του Γιλεάδ,η οποια ειναι αποτέλεσμα βαθιάς κακοήθειας,απανθρωπιάς και σήψης του δυτικού πολιτισμού μας με έντονα προβλήματα διαφθοράς ηθικής και κοινωνικής, με απόλυτη καταστροφή των φυσικών πόρων και πολλών άλλων άλυτων προβλημάτων που έχουν ως αποτέλεσμα κυρίως τη στείρωση του πληθυσμού.Γι αυτό το λόγο οι "οικογένειες" του καθεστώτος χρησιμοποιούν τις γυναίκες που ειναι γόνιμες ως αναπαραγωγικες μηχανές, τις υπόλοιπες τις πετάνε σε σκουπιδότοπους να αργοπεθαίνουν. Οι άντρες της υπόθεσης πιο τυχεροί -ειρωνεία-αποτελούνται απο βαθμίδες στρατολογημενων τρομοκρατών...!!!

Το Γιλεάδ θα έλεγα με σιγουριά ειναι η γη της επαγγελίας για κάθε φανατικό θρησκόληπτο φασίστα.

Η ιστορια μας ειναι σαν ένα ημερολόγιο μιας ανώνυμης Πορφύρης δούλης -οι πορφυρές δούλες δεν έχουν ονόματα- και μέσα απο την ιστορια της στο παρελθόν και στο παρόν μαθαίνουμε με ανατριχιαστικές λεπτομέρειες τους λόγους και τα γεγονότα που οδήγησαν στη δημιουργία του κόσμου του Γιλεάδ.

Θλίψη και εφιαλτικές εικόνες αποδόμησης των ισχυρών και δυνατών ανθρωπων που καταλήγουν θύματα του κόσμου που δημιούργησαν.

Καλή ανάγνωση!!

"Our mistake was teaching them to read. We won't do that again."

February 3, 2018

45th President Donald J. Trump resigns, blaming his failure of a presidency on the Republicans . . . or the Democrats; he can't remember with which party he's supposed to be affiliated.
Mike Pence becomes the 46th President.

March 30, 2018

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor are killed on their way home from a strip club (Hey - it could happen!), leaving Pence and the Republicans free to stack the Supreme Court with ultra conservative judges.

Abortion is quickly outlawed. In an effort to keep Trump's base on their side, Republicans decree that the only way to counter Black Lives Matter is to make MORE WHITE LIVES. Polygamy is encouraged among the white race, while oral contraceptives are dumped into the drinking water in neighborhoods with large black and Latino populations. Before long it becomes mandatory for all white, Christian women of child-bearing age to report to insemination centers where they are "sown" with the collected seed of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Joel Osteen, and Eric Trump. (Sorry, Ted Cruz - even the Republicans don't want any more of you.)

Men placed highly in the regime were thus able to pick and choose among women who had demonstrated their reproductive fitness by having produced one or more healthy children, a desirable characteristic in an age of plummeting Caucasian birthrates . . .

Pence replaces the weekly Presidential Address with televised book burnings, and public executions of climate scientists, rabble-rousers, and atheists. The U.S.A is finally a theocracy. All hail the Patriarchy, and everyone have a blessed day.

There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.

Atwood's dystopian fantasy originally published in 1986 has proven to be eerily prescient. Just read this part and tell me you can't see this happening:

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

That was when they suspended the Constitution.

Geez - they're already talking about doing that!

And there's this:

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

But wait, that's from the past, not the future. We've come along way since then, haven't we?

I guess we have to ask ourselves . . . do we really want to go back to that?

Oh, what the hell - one more chilling passage:

It's Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion. She told the same story last week. She seemed almost proud of it, while she was telling. It may not even be true. At Testifying, it's safer to make things up than to say you have nothing to reveal. But since it's Janine, it's probably more or less true.

But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger.

Her fault, her fault, her fault, we chant in unison.

Who led them on? Aunt Helena beams, pleased with us.

She did. She did. She did.

Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen?

Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.



You know, when I first read this novel thirty years ago, it sure seemed like fiction.

(A-) 80% | Very Good
Notes: Its scarlet woman's pretty passive, target of temptation, not much plot, though food for thought is ample captivation.

*Check out progress updates for detailed commentary:

Progress updates:

01/01/2023 - Preamble:
(1) It's been New Year tradition for me to have either my first book of the year or the last book of the preceding year (some years both) be a super-popular novel.
- "The Handmaid's Tale" was on clearance!
(2) When I say "super-popular," I don't mean the YA novel de jour that practically no one outside Goodreads has even heard of. I mean books that everyone knows, possibly a classic or due to a hit adaptation.

01/02/2023 - Chapters 1-8:
(1) This threw me for a bit of a loop with its use of selective quotation marks.
- Only words spoken in the immediate present get quotation marks. Anything else, be it written or a recollection, doesn't get them.
(2) Chapters 1-8 involve a trip to buy groceries.
- Definitely more about the journey than the destination.
- It does a great job at worldbuilding. Immersive and memorable, albeit somewhat uneventful.

01/03/2023 - Chapters 9-17:
(1) Around 100 pages in, and finally we have the inciting incident.
- In dystopian stories, it's usually the main character daring to undertake an act of rebellion, risking their life in the process: think Winston writing in his diary or Katniss volunteering as Tribute.
- Here's it's a pair of chapters where you have the expected/shocking duty of a handmaid, contrasted with the aforementioned act of rebellion.

01/04/2023 (1) - Chapters 18-24:
(1) "All I can hear now is the sound of my own heart, opening and closing, opening and closing, opening"
- This last line of Chapter 24 doesn't end with a punctuation, which is interesting, as well as perplexing.
- To me, it could either mean that her heart stayed open after that third round, or that, since the sentence has no end, the pattern keeps repeating indefinitely. I suppose either theory is plausible.

01/04/2023 (2) - Chapters 25-30:
(1) When I said before that the inciting incident didn't come until a third of the way into the book, I was wrong. That was a false start. It actually comes halfway through the book.
- It's been all world-building until then.
- In a twist on convention, "the rebel" isn't so clear cut.
(2) Part of the reason why I don't read much literary fiction is precisely because plot often plays second fiddle to symbolism.

01/05/2023 - Chapters 31-39:
(1) Even this far into the book, I don't know that I can identify a definite plot.
- This whole book has been the main character either telling things or learning things.
(2) This may possibly be the most passive protagonist I've ever read.
- More noticeable since it's a dystopian story.
- She doesn't actually rebel at all, except perhaps in her head. Really, she's coerced into breaking rules by everyone else.

01/06/2023 - Chapters 40-46:
(1) I don't know what to make of this book. Going into the last few short chapters, I thought to myself that this better end with some oomph because there's been very little of that so far.
- I can't say it ultimately did, though I can't say it was disappointing either.
(2) The ending's meant to be ambiguous, which I can appreciate. Though the epilogue tells you what happened, which takes some steam out of it.

This book is not what I was anticipating whatsoever. That's not to say that it wasn't worth the read, but I'm shocked how dated this felt for a book that's so revered as a classic, even though that didn't necessarily take away from my enjoyment of the book. Maybe I misinterpreted its praise, but I went into The Handmaid's Tale thinking it would be the end all be all of post-apocalyptic/dystopian books about taking away women's rights, but I actually found myself having to suspend my disbelief and read this as more of a character study on Offred than the possibility that our would would ever descend to the level of Gilead.

I can see where this book gets its roots with the second wave of feminism and anti-Vietnam lashback, and for those reasons, it made this book feel like it was written for them and not me (my generation). Because there was that level of separation, it was hard to accept that this book had any realness to it other than how Offred's oppression and mistreatment metaphorically transferred into our world. Obviously there were more morals than just the patriarchy and women losing their rights, but I almost had to read this book from the angle of how to survive loneliness rather than how to fight back against a regime that so willingly disqualifies women from gaining any freedom.

That said, I do think this book is extraordinarily well-written and I cannot wait to see how it will translate to a TV show. It's also a great resource to see why so many books, even this decade, still give The Handmaid's Tale credit when tackling the subject of women's rights being taken away by governments and futuristic societies. The epilogue was also a surprise and gave this book an entirely different flavor, so I anticipate that when I reread it, I will do so with an entirely different lens than I had the first time.

My preparedness for the regime change taking place in the United States--with elements of the Electoral College, the Kremlin and the FBI helping to install a failed business promoter who the majority of American voters did not support in the election--continues with The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Rereading this 1985 novel was a metric for me. My first attempt, shortly after joining Goodreads, led to me abandoning the book, which ebbs and flows on mood and language and prompts the reader to fill in details of this dystopian universe with their worst fears. Three years later, I was of open mind to what Atwood was doing and was deeply affected by it.

The story is the account of a woman who the reader comes to know as Offred (Of-Fred). Life as she knew it in America is over. Offred recounts fragments of her internment and reeducation at the Red Center, where women are molded into subservient vessels of a Puritan theocracy by their matron instructors, the Aunts, and kept from escape to Canada or open revolt by the armed wing of the state, the males-only Angels. The narrator then leaps forward to her post as a handmaid, a surrogate mother assigned to a pair of commissioning parents, a male known as The Commander (Fred) and his barren Wife, who the narrator recognizes from her past as a televangelist and dubs Serena Joy.

In this nightmare future, the President and Congress have been gunned down (and Islamic fanatics blamed), the Constitution suspended and civil rights advances wound back, way back, in a backlash by disenfranchised men. Liberated women were targeted first, denied banking and removed from the labor force. When out of wedlock children are taken by the state, Offred made a run for the Canadian border with her boyfriend Luke and their five-year-old daughter, neither of which she has seen or been allowed to inquire about since. Fertility rates are low, which is where handmaids like our narrator come in, rotated among the Commanders, the government officials.

In front of us, to the right, is the store where we order dresses. Some people call them habits, a good word for them. Habits are hard to break. The store has a huge wooden sign outside it, in the shape of a golden lily; Lilies of the Field, it's called. You can see the place, under the lily, where lettering was painted out, when they decided that the names of shops were too much temptation for us. Now places are known by their signs alone.

Lilies used to be movie theater, before. Students went there a lot; every spring they had a Humphrey Bogart festival, with Lauren Bacall or Katharine Hepburn, women on their own, making up their minds. They wore blouses with buttons down the front that suggested the possibilities of the word undone. These women could be undone; or not. They seemed to be able to choose. We seemed to be able to choose, then. We were a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.

The secret police, known as the Eye, watch all. On shopping excursions, Offred is paired with a handmaid named Ofglen and watched for signs of unorthodox behavior. The narrator recalls her college friend Moira, a homosexual who used her mechanical skills and will to escape the Red Center. Offred is resigned to her fate, which she understands could be worse, exiled to the Colonies as an Unwoman, perhaps. Her Commander bends the rules, spending time alone with her outside the structured mating ceremony. He supplies Offred with skin moisturizer, vintage magazines and in the course of their affair, tells of her predecessor, who hanged herself in the room she now occupies.

Serena Joy, seeking to speed along Offred's conception, also bends the state rules. She arranges a liaison for Offred with Nick, her husband's watchful valet. Committed to her role of conceiving a healthy child for her employers, Offred agrees to the arrangement. Her handmaid comrade Ofglen reveals herself to be affiliated with the resistance and presses her to spy on her Commander for them. Offred remains dubious about striking a blow to Gilead. The Commander sneaks her out of the house to show her off at a brothel where government officials are permitted to mix it up like the sinful old days. Offred is reunited with Moira, who seems resigned to her new role as concubine after capture.

The Handmaid's Tale is a tightly controlled reading experience. This is the reason I abandoned it on my first try in 2014. Atwood rations details about America's descent into Puritan theocracy like emergency supplies aboard a life raft. Depending on your hunger, this could be considered trick or treat. The novel, which might as well have been titled "Life During Wartime" without threat of legal action by Talking Heads, is like a diary written under Nazi occupation by a woman limited not only by how little she lifts her eyes from the ground to look at, but who claims to not being much of a writer. Atwood tests how long the reader can maintain patience with our narrator:

The good weather holds. It's almost like June, when we would get out our sundresses and our sandals and go for an ice cream cone. There are three new bodies on the Wall. One is a priest, still wearing the black cassock. That's been put on him, for the trial, even though they gave up wearing those years ago, when the sect wars first began; cassocks made them too conspicuous. The two others have purple placards hung around their necks: Gender Treachery. Their bodies still wear the Guardian uniforms. Caught together, they must have been, but where? A barracks, a shower? It's hard to say.

I was interested in what led to the Puritan theocracy. I wanted to know where the battle lines had been drawn. I wanted to know about the underground railroad and the resistance and how they operated. Most of all, I wanted a heroine like Moira who could fashion a blade out of a toilet lever and plunge it into the lungs of the moral degenerates terrorizing my fellow Americans. Perhaps this is territory that will be explored in the Hulu TV series starring Elisabeth Moss as Offred, Alexis Bledel as Ofglen and Samira Wiley as Moira. And perhaps if Robert McCammon wrote this as a pulp science fiction novel, I'd get to see that book. With Margaret Atwood, language is the feature attraction:

There's time to spare. This is one of the things I wasn't prepared for--the amount of unfilled time, the long parentheses of nothing. Time as white sound. If only I could embroider. Weave, knit, something to do with my hands. I want a cigarette. I remember walking in art galleries, through the nineteenth century: the obsession they had then with harems. Dozens of paintings of harems, fat women lolling on divans, turbans on their heads or velvet caps, being fanned with peacock tails, a eunuch in the background standing guard. Studies of sedentary flesh, painted by men who'd never been there. These pictures were supposed to be erotic, and I thought they were, at the time; but I see now what they were really about. They were paintings about suspended animation; about waiting, about objects not in use. They were paintings about boredom.

Reading this novel was like being thrown in a life raft: harrowing, thirsty, terrifying, drifting between past and present and by the afterword labeled "Historical Notes on The Handmaid's Tale," tiredly relieved. Offred is a passive character who doesn't engage in enough intrigue, but the wilderness Atwood lost me in actually made me appreciate her boldness to deviate from the marked trails. Her novel was brought to screen in 1988 by an American-German production adapted by Harold Pinter and directed by Volker Schlöndorff . It starred Natasha Richardson as Offred, Elizabeth McGovern as Moira, Faye Dunaway as Serena Joy, Aidan Quinn as Nick and Robert Duvall as Commander.

I have no idea how I should rate this book. I was enraptured by the story and looked forward to reading it each time I picked it up, because the writing style and moodiness had a way of immersing me into the universe. I was very intrigued with discovering how the main character and her society ended up in these circumstances. The stale atmosphere, motonous daily life, and characters' hopeless complacence all felt very real. But I'm also dissatisfied by how much is left to the imagination due to the ambiguous ending and incomplete world building. I wanted answers to how there could be such a dramatic cultural shift in a short amount of time in one of the most liberal countries in the world — getting these answers would have helped the story be more believable and immersive. I also wish we got to follow more character development, relationship building, plot structure, or pretty much anything other than just atmospheric writing and a haunting concept. I keep juggling between rating this 3 or 4 stars, but for now I'm going to lean towards 4 stars since the book still had me more captivated compared to other novels of its time and genre, and mostly succeeded with its message and writing. I'm looking forward to checking out the TV adaptation so that I have more story to chew with.