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HAf Book Club: The Handmaid's Tale discussion

Started by Sandra Craft, October 13, 2017, 06:45:52 PM

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Sandra Craft

Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Dave

I have not reread this excellent novel but will read your comments with interest.
Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

Biggus Dickus

I just started it last night and read longer and stayed up later than I had planned...so far am really enjoying it, should finish by this weekend.

Maybe.

"Some people just need a high-five. In the face. With a chair."

Sandra Craft

My copy is still in the mail.  I've read it before but that was so long ago I can't trust myself to discuss it.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Dragonia

I finished! I liked it! Kind of gave me the creeps in some ways, but I'll tell you, I wouldn't do very well in that kind of society. I'd get strung up quick. For a few different reasons.....  :o
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~ Plato (?)

Davin

It was an alright read for me, I didn't like the writing style much at all.

One point, after her first "secret" meeting with her commander or whatever, she was talking about going to the second one, but then talked about how they usually do certain things when she visits him in secret... like she was talking about the future in the present like she'd already had several of these meetings but hse'd only had one and all of the sudden there are things he usually does in these meetings.

And there was so much jumping around in time, to several different pasts, and even jumps into the future without any warning. I'd be two paragraphs into the time change before I was sure she was somewhere else.

Then she would quote other people, but it wouldn't be "quoted" it would just be regular looking text (not even italicized), and I'd only figure out that she was saying something that another person was saying on the following sentence. That bugged me.

Probably, the style was meant to make the reader as disoriented as the character, but it didn't work for me.

It was tough for me to get into the world, the way it was presented made it seem like they'd been like that for a long time given how acclimated everyone was to how things were. If we look at the middle east, in the 70's women were wearing jeans and t-shirts and looked much like Americans, it took several decades before they became all covered up. But in this world, it must have happened in at most a decade. With barely any information on how such an extraordinary thing happened, I couldn't get into the world all that well. It was easier for me to pretend the world had taken a more realistic path, and pretend that the character was much older than for me to accept the way the book presented it.

Once I ignored the world building that didn't work for me, it was a decent enough story. But the character hardly chooses anything. For me, that doesn't make much of an interesting story for me and I didn't develop any feelings for the character or any character in it. Except maybe her mother, who while had her flaws, she seemed to decide what she wanted to do and did those things. Even when she "chooses" to see the dude on the sly, she seems to do it just automatically for no reason at all. She didn't seem to enjoy it, it was like she was introduced to something and then just didn't stop.

To me, it felt more like the first third or half of a regular book, than being just a book in itself.

I'm not even interested in the possibilities of what would happen to the character after the abrupt ending, because whatever it is, she'll just sit back and let things happen to her like she always does. I mean, near the end when she declared that she would just let people use her however they wanted to use her, I thought, "and how would that be any different than how she was during the entire book?" I suppose she'd no longer be defiant in her mind which was the only place she showed any semblance of choice.

Other than those things though, it wasn't that bad. It was a pretty shitty world, and like was advertised, had some elements akin to 1984. Except that in 1984, the character at least chose to disobey, the world in 1984 was more detailed and followed a path that I could better accept... too much complaining form me.

I could see how the character would feel like she did, and that was pretty terrible, which is something that I like from the book. In the context of the character, things made sense about how she felt and who she was.

I know I just said a bunch of things that sound like I didn't like it, but really, it was about neutral for me.
Always question all authorities because the authority you don't question is the most dangerous... except me, never question me.

Sandra Craft

I just got my copy and haven't started in yet, but I remember some of the problems Davin mentioned from way back when I read it the first time. 

I also found Offred's passivity off-putting and wished a livelier character was the center of the story.  But then, perhaps someone like Offred was the only vehicle for telling this particular story -- for getting across all the insider information about the Gilead culture which I think was the main point of The Handmaid's Tale?  A less passive protagonist probably couldn't have been made to believably survive long enough to have all the necessary experiences.  Armstrong could have made an actual Gilead insider the main character, but I suppose that would have risked making the story come across pro-Gilead.

As for Armstrong's writing style, I don't remember it being any different in this book than in others.  I think she's just an acquired taste.  What I do like about her is the ability to flesh out new cultures from the past wrong turns familiar cultures have taken.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Sandra Craft

Quote from: Dragonia on October 16, 2017, 12:56:05 PM
I finished! I liked it! Kind of gave me the creeps in some ways, but I'll tell you, I wouldn't do very well in that kind of society. I'd get strung up quick. For a few different reasons.....  :o

Yeah, I remember those creeps -- thinking how close we were (even back when I first read it) to something like this, how some people were already foaming at the mouth to create a theocracy even harsher than Gilead.  I'd have been dead pretty quick in Gilead too.

I dimly remember something about a Resistance, either inside or outside of Gilead, or perhaps that part of the US was still non-Gilead.  Am I remembering right?
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Dragonia

^^^Yes, there was a resistance, which I was hoping to learn more about. This book did leave a lot of questions unanswered, like more detail on how society got to this point, when "this point" actually was, and what happened after the end of the book, dang it.
Maybe she's leaving it open for a sequel.
But I need to see the movie now!
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. ~ Plato (?)

Biggus Dickus

Quote from: Father Bruno on October 13, 2017, 07:35:22 PM
I just started it last night and read longer and stayed up later than I had planned...so far am really enjoying it, should finish by this weekend.

Maybe.

I thought I would rip through this over the weekend, but I ended up not having as much time to read as I thought I would which was my plan originally...anyway so far I'm enjoying it, but will save any critique until the end.

Except to say I did like your review Davin, and find myself thinking the same with regards to how they came about to live in this world so quickly, as it seems like a society which has been established for a much longer period of time than it appears in the book.

I am enjoying it though, and was happy to snuggle up with my copy last night in bed...air was cool, and I threw on an extra coverlet.

Good way to end a Monday. 8)
"Some people just need a high-five. In the face. With a chair."

Davin

For how the world got the way it did, there were a few things revealed. There was obviously some nukes that went off, and radiation clean up crews were mentioned at least twice. There was a direct attack on Congress, killing them all in one swoop. Then soldiers in different uniforms started showing up out of no where. And they (the new people in charge for some reason), played people against one minority at a time while taking away human rights. Which I think has proven to be a successful strategy in the past, I just think there wasn't enough time in the books time span to enact it. Even in Germany that took two decades and they were much better primed for it than the US. I'm not saying that the means and methods were unrealistic, I just think the book didn't allow enough time for it and since it didn't, it needed an extraordinary explanation.

There's some more tidbits here and there, but nothing close to providing the information.

Also, I forgot to mention that when she was going into a obviously dangerous situation, I always felt like I would do the same even knowing the dangers because I would think it worth the risk.
Always question all authorities because the authority you don't question is the most dangerous... except me, never question me.

Sandra Craft

Well, I finally finished and to my surprise I liked it better this time than when I first read it nearly 35 yrs ago.  Back then, I found it impossible to sympathize with Offred -- she was just too dim and flaccid a character -- but this time I felt that I totally understood her emotional state.  I felt this was an excellent depiction of someone truly caught in a situation that she can't escape and can't change and the only way to endure it (in hopes of some change happening some time that benefits her) is to emotionally flat-line.

Disconnect, relate to it only as a bad dream you're watching, focus on minutiae (opening a door, walking across the floor, setting a basket down) to keep your mind distracted from the big picture.  If you're cherishing even the tiniest hope that things may get better some day, living like Offred did is the only way to keep from killing yourself, or provoking someone else to kill you.

I particularly liked this line about Janine's "shredder" baby:  "It's like Janine, though, to take it upon herself, to decide the baby's flaws were due to her alone.  But people will do anything rather than admit that their lives have no meaning.  No use, that is.  No plot."

I think that was the worst of life in Gilead for anyone but the privileged few in charge -- to have your life have no meaning for you, and have use only as a thing for others, like a mop being handed around.  I wouldn't have lasted long in a place like Gilead.  Even if I weren't already aged out of usefulness, someone like me would never be eligible as a Wife, and life as a Handmaid or Jezebel would both have been too horrible.  I'd be one of those willingly going to the colonies, even knowing what that meant.
Sandy

  

"Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet."  Sarah Louise Delany

Dave

^
I find that a moving analysis, Books.

Truly when only the mundane is left within your personal control then the mundane becomes an important part of life.
Tomorrow is precious, don't ruin it by fouling up today.
Passed Monday 10th Dec 2018 age 74

Biggus Dickus

Quote from: Dave on October 29, 2017, 04:39:36 AM
^
I find that a moving analysis, Books.

Truly when only the mundane is left within your personal control then the mundane becomes an important part of life.

I agree with you Dave, Books analysis was very moving and personal...I finished the book last week and although I did enjoy it, I wish it had been longer.

It seemed like the book itself mirrored the situation of Offred, and that we were only reading a small portion of the entire story, just a glimpse of what life would be like for someone in that situation, focused on the minutiae as Books described in her analysis.

But maybe that was the authors point, and it didn't hit me until the very end of the book when I read the final chapter.

Prior to finishing the book I don't know if I would have recommended it to anyone, but now I know I would definitely recommend it. In fact I think at some point in a year or two I'll reread it.

"Some people just need a high-five. In the face. With a chair."