BOOK OF THE MONTH
The Handmaid's Tale
With terrifying understatement, this novel narrates the life of a college-educated mother ripped from her career and family to be a slave, in a dystopian United States too plausible to be forgotten. Forbidden by a fanatical government to read, choose their own clothes or appear in public alone, handmaids fulfill an awful purpose as the servants of wealthy families. All the while, however, strange new friendships emerge between the powerless and the powerful, as revolution glimmers on the horizon.
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✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *The Handmaid’s Tale* is a powerful, chilling dystopian classic and a sobering meditation on rights and privilege. Many praise Atwood’s po...
Overall, it was a bit slow and dry, but definitely scary. It was a good meditation inspiration about not taking rights and privileges for granted and had a few great passages such as this: "It’s an event, a small defiance of rule, so small as to be undetectable, but such moments are the rewards I hold out for myself, like the candy I hoarded, as a child, at the back of a drawer. Such moments are possibilities, tiny peepholes."
I feel this novel was building up in plot and intensity and then ultimate fell extremely flat. What exactly did I read? It felt like there was nowhere for the plot to go and just kind of ended? I guess that was a cliffhanger, but I don’t feel as though I care to know what happens. The main character was so unlike-able in my opinion, that I don’t care for them or seeing what happens next. The book consisted of some many descriptions of things and not much else. The overall world is so interesting but I don’t think the plot of the protagonist lived up to the intricate and interesting world Atwood created.
The books is well-written...I just didn't care much for it. Maybe the whole scenario was just too depressing for me.
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