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I enjoyed reading the “Handmaid’s tale”, because it is a tale of a person, who is writing his real experiences down in a book so that everybody can read her real feelings and secrets. The reader can put himself in her place.
I think that futuristic books are always interesting to read, because they contains things that are inconceivably in our society. But one can always imagine such a situation nowadays. I try to put myself in the protagonist’s place and think about what I would have done if it was me who decide how to act.
I read the book till the end and it was an open end, because we don’t know what happened to Offred and where she was taken away. The man only sad it is “Mayday” but we don’t know whether it is good or bad for Offred. To be honest I don’t like open ends. I always want to have a happy or a sad end, it doesn’t matter which one.
As a rule it is better to understand if the book has a chronological order, Although the times in Handmaid’s Tale are always in a mess it doesn’t interfere the reader to understand the book.
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I didn't care for this one, a tad too polemical.
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So, while the Canadian Library Association says there is "no known instance of a challenge to this novel in Canada" an investigation has been launched by a school board in Canada, home to Margaret Atwood, one of our most esteemed authors who won the Governor General's Award for this novel when it was published, in 1985! :(
"Complaint spurs school board to review novel by Atwood": http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/article/570616
"Atwood novel too brutal, sexist for school: parent": http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/article/571999
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I read the novel several years and liked it a lot. I don't remeber finding it too brutal or sexist for being studied at school.
Signs of times...:sick:
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I first picked up this book when I was about 17. It was on the reading list for our English course but after a few pages I put it away and chose Zadie Smith's White Teeth instead.
Las year I had to read it for a master's course on dystopic novels and ended up writing my final paper on The Handmaid's Tale. I'm actually glad I didn't read it in highschool because I really think I wouldn't have appriated it as much as I did now. The course really put the novel in the right context and I think this is a book which needs this kind of perspective.
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I can't believe it's being challenged for exactly what it was pointing out. Handmaid's Tale is a feminist novel, written in the 80s. I mean women's rights in Canada is still questionable, but you can actually apply the story to something like... Afghanistan right now. Too graphic for you? Don't read it! No one should challenge someone else's art. And why would you even take a literature class if you were not expecting to learn about politics side by side with it. Rant aside! I voted 4.
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Voted four, it's probably one of my favorite dystopian future books. I liked the open ending a lot, and I think it resounded with me a lot more than a simply happy or sad ending would have.
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It was interesting and I got quite into it but the writing's so-so. It really bugged me when Atwood constantly wrote 'oh, this is how it used to be', as if she had to make the futuristic setting valid. The bits with Offred and the commander were by far the most interesting.
EDIT: Film's totally weird different! Made me appreciate book more.
