Review: _The Handmaid's Tale:_ May day! May day!

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I read this one a long time ago, when it was first released in the early 1980's. It was the cover of the book that caught my eye, the woman looking like someone out of a Brueghel painting, her face and body obscured by red and white. If you're an educated woman, this is a terrifying novel to read. It shows in sparse, poetical language of a dystopia gone mad, where fundamental Christianity has run rampant, where Thou Shalt Not has replaced Love Your Neighbor with crushing brutality. And also, it's an example of just how far we have come in our society to having freedom to choose and how easily it can be stripped away. (A dystopia, by the way, is the opposite of a Utopia -- so this is a place where very few people are happy and taken care of.) In Gilead (in what was once known as the United States), a woman is only valued for her work, as a Wife, as a Martha (a drudge) or as a Handmaid. The handmaids are walking wombs, vital only for the children that they can bear - if they can. Their lives, circumscribed by horrifying rituals, are centered around the prayer of make me fertile. For if they can not bear children, a sentence of living death in clearing up a toxic waste - or worse - awaits them. This is the story of one such Handmaid, Offred. Shorn of her name, of her family, of privacy and her past, she is forbidden to read, to communicate with men, her vision blinded by her concealing headdress, enwombed in clothing of crimson that declare, I am Forbidden, do not touch, Offred struggles to hang onto whatever shreds of herself that she can. She can not trust anyone, lives with jealousy and fear; she seeks that most basic of rights, that of freedom. To escape Gilead, to find her missing daughter, to find love, that is Offred's quest and we are pulled along with her, to an ending that holds some glimmers of hope. All of the characters are distinctly drawn, from the women in the re-education center, to the Marthas in the household where Offred lives. There's the Commander and his Wife, Serena, who are chilling to watch, as people who could have prevented this, or at least, brought some kind of good, but choose not to. Most heartbreaking of all is the other Handmaids, Ofglen and Ofwarren, each one desperately seeking out their own salvation in this bleak world. Most intriguing of all, is the Commander's driver/bodyguard, Nick, of whom I wish I could have seen more. Atwood crafts the story in first person, a style I usually avoid, but here it is well handled, the stark language able to evoke color and shape, sound and texture with crystalline clarity. I heartily recommend it to anyone who thinks that our world cannot change in a heartbeat. The most unsettling part of this book is that the ending is abrupt, with quite a few dangling ends -- the premise is that this is the transcription of a box of tapes that was found at some point in the future. Many readers will find the lack of a happy ending to be disturbing, but I think it adds to the novel and allows the reader to craft his or her own ending. I've read it several times over, and it has become one of my favorites for sheer style and craftsmanship. In fact, when The Folio Society recently reissued this book in a collector's edition, I snapped it right up. I don't do that with a lot of authors these days. A warning to the reader, some of the scenes in this book are particularly violent, but nothing too graphic is depicted. A film version of this was made in the late 80's that is not particularly interesting, but it did get several vivid sections of the book correct, with the requisite Hollywood happy ending tacked on. Five stars, and possibly the best dystopia that I have ever read. The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 2006; Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday Books ISBN 978-0-3072-460-2