Margaret Atwood "The Handmaid's Tale" (Carla)

 THE HANDMAID’S TALE:

This book is titled The Handmaid’s Tale  and was written in 1985 by Margaret Atwood. The story is about a girl named Offred who lives in the Republic of Gilead which is a futuristic society where fertile women are forced to get pregnant. We follow her everyday routine and learn more about her life before Gilead: she had a daughter, a husband, a normal life, and everything was taken away from her. Will she follow the rules or will she try to escape and find her family?

The real message of the book is feminist and is about the place of woman in society. The book won several awards: the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction award in 1985, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction in 1986 and the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. After the success of the book, “The Handmaid’s Tale” was adapted into a famous tv show in 2017 starring Elisabeth Moss as Offred, but it has also been adapted into a movie, a play, a ballet and even an opera!

I really enjoyed reading this novel and I would totally recommend for the following two reasons:

 One of the things I loved about the book is the personality of the main character: she seemed so real. She is the narrator and sometimes I felt like she was talking to me, as if I were her friend. She is smart, kind and has a lot of qualities, but she also has defaults. The other realistic thing about her is that she’s not the hero of the society, she is just a woman, secretly against the republic, but she is not the one who will destroy the political system of Gilead and save the population like a lot of protagonists in other books.

The second thing I liked about the book, but that also scared me a lot, is that the plot of the book isn’t impossible. There are countries where women are oppressed and people aren’t talking about that enough. I think The Handmaid’s Tale made me realize that some women’s lives are similar to Offred’s because they’re not allowed to go to school, to hold hands in public…. This book was published in 1985 and I find it outrageous that we still have to fight for gender equality in 2022! That is why it was great to read it, but it also made me think about women’s rights so it has a deeper meaning.

If I had to choose one thing I didn’t really like about the book, it would be some moments about Offred’s past. They were important for her backstory, to understand where she came from, and how she ended up here, but for some reasons I wasn’t the biggest fan of these parts. They were useful but I found some details a little bit boring. 

As I said earlier, I would totally recommend The Handmaid’s Tale  to everyone because I found it pretty easy to read, and I would especially recommend it to every feminist who will absolutely adore this book!