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I hated that book. Review below
First the plot. I think I could live with an unbelievable speculative world, and even with arrogant writing, if interesting stuff happens to interesting people. Very little happens in this book, and very little of what happens is due to the agency of the main character. I get that that's part of the point: women in this literary universe (and in the world in general) are so often oppressed and powerless, and its difficult to them to feel like they have any agency. But it doesn't make the main character very interesting, or even very feminist. Offered is kind of sniveling coward who goes along with pretty much every thing that's done to her, only taking matters into her own hands when she wants to have sex with the chauffeur (which I suppose could be read as empowering, but did not come off to me that way).
Secondly, the world building. Margaret Atwood markets herself as an author of "Speculative Fiction" rather than "Science Fiction" or "Fantasy" because she prefers to think of herself as someone who writes about things that could happen. The thing is, The Handmaid's Tale could never happen in this country, especially not on the timescale suggested. Polyamory is not something acceptable for the Christian right (although not so on the left), and the reduction of Women to sex objects is not something that Christianity preaches (the most revered women in the faith is A VIRGIN). Even if some kind of twisted version of the faith was to appear, there's no way it would be able to seize power in the country, and have such widespread support on the timescale suggested. And that's not to mention the whole issue of political conflict in a society with a declining birth rate. Atwood does this kind of okay in some aspects: most everyone in the Handmaid's tale just seems tired: no one actually believes in all the crap that the regime puts on, which I think fits with the general narrative of declining population. That, however, does not fit with the brainwashing or the force of belief required for Gilead to overthrow the US government. Again, I think this speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of Atwood's about fundamentalists. A lot of fundamentalists actually really deeply believe what they say they do. What Atwood presents here is yet another caricature of religious extremism: hypocrites who don't actually practice what they preach.
Given some historical context in which this was written (aftermath of Reagan's election and Iranian Revolution), the world of this book makes a little more sense. However, Atwood's concerns about the rights of women have, at least in my opinion, aged badly. Although the Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade in 2022, many states, including Massachusetts, still have the right to abortion enshrined by their constitutions. The religious right is increasingly irrelevant: their champion is a hedonistic old man who fails to even make lip service to any kind of religious morals. Threats to women rights rather have come from capital, and the insidious reduction of everything, from bodies, to free time, to meaningful relationships, to the grasping hand of the market. Atwood so poignantly critiqued this system in her MaddAddam trilogy, and it was frustrating to not see that same level of analysis here.
Finally, I found the writing to be unnecessarily convoluted and confusing. Frequent, un-signalled flashbacks, and lack of quotation marks were the worst offenders. I get that this was supposed to be due to the framing device of these being audio transcripts, but it still grinds my gears. Atwood is not unique in this regard (looking at you Cormac Mccarthy). I also found that the framing device didn't really do it for me: somehow this being a university lecture ~100 years after the fall of Gilead made the whole speculative world even more unbelievable for me.
The main issue with the book is that she understands the aesthetics of certain religious groups but has no real understanding of the mechanics of it.
In real life young attractive and fertile women were treated exceptionally well. The young women pharaohs had children with lived in luxury. Young women married to princes lived in luxury. In no culture do elite level men keep the mothers of their kids in basements.
On the flip side elite level men generally have had an easy time finding women and don't have to resort to capturing women. Taking slave wives that live in poverty is something low class men who would engage in.
Atwood really fails at evolutionary psychology and anthropology. Her books confirms my belief that many of the worst ideas in modern politics comes from people literature background who don't really understand the underlying mechanisms.
Well, it wasn't a basement, it was an attic, but the Russians basically did.
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A few comments
•The Sons of Jacob definitely aren’t supposed to be a mainline Christian denomination. The name “Jesus” is pointedly never mentioned by anyone in Gilead, ever, nor is anything from the New Testament. The SoJ have difficulty controlling the Deep South due to Baptist insurgents, which would imply that many hardline denominations are not on board. Additionally, book Gilead has a strong racial apartheid element, with the “Sons of Ham” being confined to South Africa style Zanzibar-stans. This would seem to imply the SoJ are a strain of Dominionist weirdos and not mainline Christians. This was changed in the tv show to make the SoJ racially egalitarian, which honestly probably tracks better with radical Christian groups today. Many of the lower level political commissars of Gilead are former rad-fems, which also doesn’t really track with any 80s right wing or religious movement (though it seems oddly prescient today).
•It seems to be implied the fertility crisis caused massive social pressure which allowed the SoJ to seize power, and that the handmaids and the rest of the social structure are more of a semi-pragmatic measure to deal with that, and not just some stupid LARP. It annoys me that in the show Canada seems to be able to just be a normal liberal brunchtopia in the face of an existential demographic crisis.
•I think post-script seemingly taking place after the fall of the regime is an homage to Orwell’s 1984 with the Newspeak dictionary at the end.
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I have only read two novels by Atwood, but the thing that seems to run through both of them is that she combines the subtlety of a pulp writer with the pretentions of a literary fiction author. It's a bizarre combination.
For parallelism, perhaps it should be "the subtlety of a pulp writer with the humility of a literary fiction author".
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