Sunday, July 9, 2017

A Handmaid's Tale- Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale
So, I don't know how popular my opinion on this book is going to be, and part of the reason is because of Hulu.

Alrighty, so if you've been living under a rock, this book is about a dystopian society which is slowly revealed throughout the book to be virtually barren.  The titular Handmaids are the women who have been shown to be fertile, tasked with helping to repopulate the human race (or, Gilead at least) with the most elite males of society. (As in, you're with a guy till he knocks you up, then on to the next. These are the guys with money. Shock.) They are forced to wear red, showing every person they come into contact with that they are to be "revered ". Except that... No one reveres them. The other castes of women, Wives (self explanatory) and Marthas (maids) look down on the Maids as being slutty (as if they aren't under threat of death if they don't go and do who they're told).

I'm not going to give an entire plot summary for you, you can just read the damn book because you should anyway, whether I'm a huge fan or not. At first I was really irritated that the circumstances of this world were shadowed for so long, that pieces of information were given out bit by bit without context. Probably because I was a bad girl and started watching the Hulu miniseries before reading the book. (I didn't want to... Amazon made me... They didn't add the book to their Prime reading until after I was halfway through the show! TOTALLY not my fault!) I already knew a lot about what had happened and why she was in the situation she was in, and with the dull writing style, the monotone and detached narrator was hard to concentrate on sometimes.

Anyway, my overall takeaway was this: the concept is amazing, but I actually think it was executed better in the show than the book. The ability to use visuals gives a whole new level, a level I found myself yearning for while reading. Seeing where they use reds, where they use blues, where they use blacks, the execution of cinematography. Obviously I wouldn't have this complaint if I had read the book first.
I still think this is a must read for everyone, but maybe do it the way you're supposed to and wait until AFTER you finish the book to watch the show.

The Book
🌹🌹🌹🌹

The Writing
🕯️🕯️🕯️🕯️

Readability
🕰️🕰️🕰️

No comments:

Post a Comment