Looking Back - The Handmaid's Tale

Looking Back... In an effort to transfer my book journal entries over to this blog, I'm going to attempt to post (in chronological order) an entry every Friday. I may or may not add extra commentary to what I jotted down in these journals.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Fiction

1985

Finished on May 19, 2002

Rating: 4.5/5 (Very Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

The Handmaid's Tale is an instant classic and eerily prescient cultural phenomenon, from "the patron saint of feminist dystopian fiction" (New York Times). 

The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men in its population. The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order. In condensed but eloquent prose, by turns cool-eyed, tender, despairing, passionate, and wry, she reveals to us the dark corners behind the establishment’s calm facade, as certain tendencies now in existence are carried to their logical conclusions. The Handmaid’s Tale is funny, unexpected, horrifying, and altogether convincing. It is at once scathing satire, dire warning, and a tour de force. It is Margaret Atwood at her best.

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 valued only if their ovaries are viable.

Offred can remember the years 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... everything has changed.

My Original Thoughts (2002):

Terrific! Couldn't put it down. Much better than The Blind Assassin. I will be more apt to read more by Atwood now that I've read this engaging and imaginative novel. It's quite disturbing, at times. Highly recommend.

My Current Thoughts:

It's funny to read my past thoughts on this book since I've always thought I didn't like it. Huh. I'm really tempted to read it again now that I'm watching the Hulu TV series, starring Elizabeth Moss (which is outstanding!).

Cat's Eye

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
Fiction
1989 Doubleday (first published September 1988)
Finished on May 30, 2020
Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

Cat's Eye is Margaret Atwood's first novel since her international award-winning best-seller The Handmaid's Tale, in which she created a futuristic totalitarian society. In Cat's Eye, Atwood moves away from this overtly political territory to a landscape which is more personal but no less disturbing.

Painter Elaine Risley, pushing fifty, returns from Vancouver to Toronto for a retrospective of her work, which has been much celebrated by the women's movement and much attacked from other quarters.

Toronto is the city she fled many years earlier, hoping to leave behind the tyrannical and obsessive memories of her early life there--from her post-World War II school days and fifties adolescence, through the avant-garde art scene of the sixties, to the advent of feminism in the early seventies.

Now, as she wanders the streets of the city, which are no longer puritanical and dowdy but resplendent with eighties glitz, Elaine confronts the submerged layers of her past--her unconventional family, her eccentric and brilliant brother, the self-righteous and dangerous Mrs. Smeath, and the two men Elaine later came to love in diverse and sometimes disastrous ways. But it is the enigmatic Cordelia, once her tormentor, then her best friend, whose elusive yet powerful presence in her life Elaine finally comes to understand.

The realm of childhood and growing up, with its secrecies, cruelties, betrayals, and terrors, has never been so luminously evoked. Through the quirky, idiosyncratic voice of Elaine Risley, Atwood has given fascinating dimensions to the ambiguous roots of women's relationships, both with one another and with the world. 

By turns disquieting, hilarious, compassionate, haunting, and mordant, Cat's Eye is vintage Atwood, and her most deeply felt work of fiction to date.

Nope. No more. Margaret Atwood is one of those widely praised authors whose novels simply aren't for me. I've read three of her books (Oryx and Crake, The Handmaid's Tale and The Blind Assassin) and each time I ask myself, Why?  A year or two ago, I tried to read The Edible Woman, but after a few chapters, I called it quits. So why did I spend the last two weeks reading Cat's Eye? One of my good friends recommended it, telling me that it's her all-time favorite book, so I thought I'd see how I like it and if it could change my opinion about Atwood's works. 

I have to admit that I really did enjoy the first half of the novel, in spite of the cruel bullying inflicted on Elaine. Atwood is a good storyteller and does a fine job with the every day life details of her young characters. There is plenty of tension in these early chapters (and I will probably never forget Cordelia), but my interest began to wane as the story progressed and Elaine entered college.

Overall, Cat's Eye was worth reading, in spite of becoming a bit of a slog, but it's not one that I loved.