Finally Friday - Fiction or Life as we Know It?

 A lot of folks need to  start reading and thinking.  These works are "fiction" ???

Book Review - The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is so chillingly apt for our 2017 lives. Crap. I have chills.  It was written in 1986 and I have to say Atwood is freaking brilliant, prescient, and oh so wise. It has had a resurgence thanks to a production on Hulu (which I have not seen. It stars Elizabeth Moss  - an excellent actress).  Anyway – this book is very worthy of a read. It was our book club pick and I can’t wait to discuss it with my friends.

From the back blurb:  Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may only leave the Commander’s home once a day to walk to the food market. Women are no longer allowed to read. Women no longer have access to money. She has to pray that the Commander impregnates her. She is valued only because her ovaries are viable. She can remember the years before, when she lived and made love to her husband, played and protected her daughter, had  a job, money, and access to knowledge. All that is gone now…

Read and find out what happens. Review the life she remembers, how she exists now, and what is possible…if anything.

Atwood has created a world that is horrific and possible. Her vision is amazing and her writing is genius. I read this and shall turn around and re-read it. Wow. It blew my mind.  Quite profound.

I dog-eared this whole book.

p. 64  I’ve learned to do without a lot of things. If you have a lot, you get too attached to this material world and you forget about spiritual values. You must cultivate poverty of spirit.

p.94 What’s going on…has nothing to do with passion or love or romance…it has nothing to do with sexual desire

p.135  Maybe it’s about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it

p.193  The moment of betrayal is the worse, the moment when you know beyond any doubt that you’ve been betrayed: that some other human being has wished you that much evil.

The Handmaid’s Tale is absolutely  one of the best books I’ve ever read.  Get it. Read it. Think. And re-read it.  And re-read it. Discuss.  Dang!!!