Margaret Atwood - The Handmaid's Tale

Pros: Absorbing political allegory, compelling main character, important themes that resonate loudly
Cons: Takes a while to get going

I have been running the book fairs at the elementary school attended by my children for many years. Two fairs each year. In all that time I thought I had sort of “seen it all” when it came to putting on one of these events, but I was wrong. ...

Pros: Carefully crafted prose, tense narrative.
Cons: Philosophy a little overdone.

Kansas this isn't

In her best-known novel, The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood gives us a world in which society has changed, almost overnight and almost out of all recognition:

* The "Republic of Gilead," a...

Pros: Powerful and intense, writing style, unique view on sex and politics
Cons: none

What would life be like without creativity, compassion, and freedom? Can you imagine not being able to read, laugh, or show love toward anyone? This is what life is like for a woman in Offred’s world. Offred belongs to the only class of fertile ...

Pros: A startling look at a very backward and dystopian future.
Cons: None that I can think of.

Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale is most possibly her darkest novel to date. The Handmaid's Tale single handedly confirmed Atwood as a powerhouse writer, and earned her many awards including Canada's top literary prize, the ...

Pros: Well-crafted, intelligent novel.
Cons: None.

I read this one a long time ago, when it was first released. It was the cover of the book that caught my eye, the woman looking like someone out of a Brueghel painting, her face and body obscured by red and white.

If you're an educated woman,...

Pros: Excellent characterization, palpable emotions, unique theme, erudite narration, evokes deep contemplation.
Cons: None.

-Genesis "Night Falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet, if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind ...

Pros: A brilliant and terrifying glimpse of a horrifying future.
Cons: Maybe too close to the evening news for some. May also cause weight gain.

Today as I was driving to work, my local NPR station broadcast a request for listeners to call or email the station and report what, if anything, has changed about them since the September 11th terrorist attack. "Well," I thought grimly, "I've gotten...

Pros: Exceptionally well written and intense book.
Cons: Some may not understand.

Imagine, one day in the future that terrorists kill the president and all members of congress. You and your husband are in shock as is the rest of the country. The government is holding on by thin threads, trying to organize elections. In the mean...

Pros: Powerful, terrifying cautionary tale
Cons: No one is listening to it anymore

This book was so terrifying to me that it took me three tries to get all the way through it. (I was aided, in the end, by an unabridged reading from Recorded Books LLC, which I also highly recommend.) What terrifies me now is not only that it is...

Pros: Intelligent, intense tale.
Cons: Writing style dull; ending disappointing.

This story has just proven to me that I will never enjoy any story Margaret Atwood writes.

Growing up in Canada, it's practically hammered into your brain that Atwood is the queen of Can Lit. But my personal opinion is that all the...

Pros: Compelling dystopian story
Cons: Atwood's prose can be hard to follow if you don't read closely

I have to admit, I have a weird addiction to this book. I picked it off a bookshelf at random in 1990 (I remember the date clearly, as it was during my one miserable year at an all-women's private Catholic college), and couldn't put it down - even when...

Pros: Provocative; intense; captivating; well-written
Cons: Ending is disappointing

In The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, a woman, known only as Offred, tells her story. She lives in the late 20th century in which the United States has retreated to a male-dominated, Puritan-like society. Women have no rights, cannot hold...

Pros: A fascinating glimpse into a possible future. Horrifying but equally captivating.
Cons: none

The dystopian novel has always been a fascinating affair and often conjures some images that we’d rather not think of but hoard like guilty pleasures. Margaret Atwood tackles this topic with much zest and disturbing content, some of which is...

Pros: The writing is incredible, engrossing, and horrifying.
Cons: I already mentioned horrifying.

This is one of the very few books I didn't sell back at the end of the semester from my Core I class. The Handmaid's Tale is one of the best books I have ever read, and I suggest it to absolutely everyone.

Required for Core I -...

Pros: Gripping, compelling, utterly unique
Cons: can be confusing as the plot is revealed slowly; a bit dated

In Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", a futuristic dystopia results when a radical religious sect seizes power in the United States and enforces its extremist beliefs on the populace. In this new society of religious absolutism, women in...