The Handmaid's Tale

Blind Assassin was actually good. Sure it is pulpy, but it's better than most at what it does. Lovecraft is endlessly lauded and yet his body of work aside from the ground breaking ideas for the time, do not hold up in the slightest.

Yes. Reducation camps by religious fundamentalists forbidding women from reading and basically making them chattel, hasn't happened at any other time in history, currently isn't happening in parts of the world, and most importantly it's about women's rights in those horrible circumstances.

So obviously it's social justice warrior because, you can't ever talk about world social problems ever if they involve women in even the slightest justifiable capacity

>(If viewed with this in mind)

It's firmly rooted in equality for the sexes whilst discribing the power relationships between men and women

There's no desire for 'wymen' to become stronger and more powerful. This sort of behavior is actively ridiculed by the protagonist when the Aunts spout it.

If we compare it to works in the sci-fi genre it will probably fare better than most, but considering it's a Booker-winning novel my expectations were higher.

Nobody after her kidnapping was in actual love. This is the point of view of a broken person looking for escape and people manipulating her through the easiest possible way to do so, hope through love, hope through seeing her child again

The aunts don't want freedom for anyone though. They aren't strong for the sake of it, they're strong because they're essentially overseers

I can see how that I missed that through the clunky dialogue and crappy prose. Might have made Offred more relatable.

>muh world building

LOL WORLD BUILDING you fucking faggot go back to reading genreshit, "world building" is basically daycare for autistic kids - here, distract yourself with this bullshit, don't worry about actually performing readerly analysis

what garbage

Fair point, maybe it was just the vibe they gave off in other parts of the novel.

I apologise for enjoying, you know, descriptions. It allows you to garner feeling from the landscape alone, without drowning it all out with edgy metaphor.

The biggest con is probably the fact that the prose is "kind of good" at best, and usually vacillates between mediocre and dreadful.

posted this on the other handmaid tale thread (are americans doing this in highschool or something) over here: >I found the premise a little ridiculous, even for a dystopia. Her writing isn't terrible but it's not stellar. I thought Moral Disorder and Oryx & Crake were better, but for some reason people like to hoist up this one as the go-to. It's accessible feminist lit.

the premise ridiculous? as in unbelievable? i sure that everything that had occurred had occurred at some point during history. those 200+ girls kidnapped and married off by boko haram would have experienced much worse.

my problem with it is that its so badly written.

everything is so heavy-handed, as if antwood despises all subtly and subtext.

i remember after the protagonista plays scrabble with the man they start speaking casually and - i shit you not - the narrator finds it necessary to write "you can tell from the way we were talking we were on different terms now" or something. furthermore, every so often there are chapters entitled "night" whose sole function is merely for the narrator to dissect all the events, characters and shifting social structures from the previous chapters.

and then - holy fuck - at the end of the book is an afterword merely there as a critique of the book itself. spoiler: at the end the narrator is freed by a man supposedly from the underground resistance. the afterword describes a group of academics explaining the ambiguity of whether she was really freed or rather captured by a secret police agent pretending to be resistance.

its as if she was trying to write a feminist book (not inherently wrong) and a book about that feminist book at the same time. it was sloppy and badly written. the only interesting character is janine and the commander.

>edgy metaphor

LOOK, IT'S TRYING TO TALK ABOUT LITERATURE HNNFFFFFFF

You know I'm going to get shit for this. And get ripped apart. But this is basically strictly written for women, and not men. It's horrifying, to us, the ideas that come across within it. It just, doesn't make your skin crawl. It makes you want to throw up. Because not only is the premise not without its authenticity, the idea of religious fundamentalism and the complete stripping of rights of us, but just, everything. The criticisms are fair, but the book is meant to strike every single fear most women have throughout their lives. It touches every single uncomfortable, sickening, dark corner of the mind, that you try forgetting about growing up.

It touches everything. Fear of only existing for pregnancy, fear of only existing and getting pushed into marriage, fear of rape, fear of molestation, fear of accepting every single awful thing that happens to this poor woman, as just the way things are.

For a number of reasons, it's just, something men really can't understand.

Remember that time you read The Witches as a kid? The Roald Dahl book. It didn't have terrific prose, to ever be said lightly. But when you were reading it, say 5 years old. Something about the idea that there are adults who are willing to dehumanize you, some powerful organization or force you couldn't do shit about. Just because they wanted to shove you to the side and get rid of you. It's less realistic, children getting turned into mice forever.

But as far as comparisons can go, it hits similar nerves, but all the more extreme because not only has this happened in history, it's happening right now. It just makes you paranoid and sick to your stomach.

Totally rip me apart for this, I don't care. I mean, when I read it in high school, I cried, not totally out of sadness for the character, but just out of dread. I haven't cried much in any novel I've read, I have with Flowers for Algernon.

There's something disgustingly visceral about it.

I think it's more for women.

no one (well, outside Veeky Forums at least) doubts the credibility of the premise. but a good book needs far more than a shocking vision - it needs to be well-written. taken as Young Adult fiction it is probably one of the best - far better than john green or twilight-style fantasy. as i explain crudely here : , the lack of any subtlety reveals its demographic. perhaps i would have seen past that had i been younger when i first read it.

of course, many people (esp here) will recoil from any book with a slither of a feminist message.