The Handmaids Tale

The whole idea behind this blog is to share great books (and cocktail recipes) with you!!!  Post after post I will tell you what books I’ve read and loved, some that I’m looking forward to reading and occasionally a book that didn’t float my literary boat.  Some will be books I’m reading now, some are memories from my reading log. But either way, you are bound to find some that sound good to you. Add them to your TBR list and get reading!

The book I want to share with you today was one of my favorite reads of 2018 and it was also my first read of 2018.  I received it as a Christmas gift and couldn’t wait to jump right in.  In all truthfulness, I may have read it between Christmas and New Years, but it was the first book logged in my 2018 reading list

The Handmaid’s Tale

by Margaret Atwood

If you’ve heard of it, it’s probably thanks to Hulu’s TV series.  The book was published in 1998, but the show put it on the map! I read the book before the show came out, and if you haven’t seen the series yet, I highly recommend reading the book first (this is always a good idea!).

I had only a very vague idea what the book was about when I picked it up, but I knew that it was getting a lot of hype!  Once I started reading, I was shocked to learn that this book was not historical fiction, but dystopian fiction.  I never would have expected the story was set in the future and very possibly, if someone had told me it was dystopian fiction, I would not have been as eager to read it.

If you don’t know the story line by now, you might be living under a rock. In the book, there have been environmentally damaging events that have left much of the world’s population sterile.  Therefore, any woman who is of childbearing age (and extra points if they have been pregnant before) is forced to be a Handmaid…which is essentially a sex slave for rich families, specifically the commanders of the Gilead army, which is the group that has taken over the United States.

The book is narrated by a handmaid called Offred.  We learn about the details of her life, both her life as a handmaid and her life previously, in which she was married and had a daughter.

My favorite thing about this book, and the thing that made it most disturbing, is how easily I can see it happening in real like.  How easy one’s rights could be taken away, how you can’t comprehend where it will lead, how people expect that things will eventually return to normal…how people can convince themselves to go along with some horrible things “for the greater good”.

It’s a great read!  Blessed be the fruit!

Tracy