This being the first of the book reviews I’ve done in quite a while, I suppose I should clarify what my intentions are with them. In the past, I have written book reviews mostly with the intent of supporting author friends. I see no reason why I shouldn’t continue to support authorly friends, so if you have a book you’d like me to read and review for you, please contact me. I will warn that physical reading take a lot longer for me these days. Audio is better, mostly because of time and attention constraints. I have drive time that I can dedicate to listening where I can’t read a physical book while doing that. That’s a good 5 hours a week just listening to books. I also listen while cleaning, eating, cooking, that sort of thing. I can try physical reading again too, so please don’t let that deter you if you want my thoughts on your work.
I digress, as I so often do. What I intend with these book reviews: my own thoughts, such as they may be. Sometimes, it may be a lot of focus on plot and character. It could be on craft, voice, even setting. Knowing me, a lot will just be general thoughts. Anyway, in short, just know that I read widely and enjoy talking about books in general. So expect that from these reviews.
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This is not a first impression of The Handmaid’s Tale. No, I first listened to this audiobook probably 10-ish years ago. But I just finished a re-listen and it was better than I remember. And I remember liking it a lot then. That said, here are my thoughts on it as it sits fresh on my mind.
Atwood writes beautifully. Simply put, it’s wonderful prose that, at least in my opinion, perfectly encapsulates the protagonist’s mindset. It isn’t until the epilogue that we discover this story was “discovered” as a series of audio cassettes, but that one revelation makes the whole thing make so much more sense to me, from a technical standpoint. The fact that I have absorbed it through audiobook only drives that further home. The delivery of the version I have, read by Claire Danes, truly feels like half of a conversation, like the oral passing down of stories from elder to child a generation or two removed.
That’s what so much of this feels like to me: like a story told, not one written. Obviously I don’t know if Atwood intended that to be its format from the beginning, or if it came along during the process somewhere, but I like to believe it is intended to be heard more than read, in general.
I’m writing this on October 13, 2025 in the United States, and it goes without saying that this book very much hits hard right now. It’s well-documented that Atwood took a lot of inspiration from Orwell’s 1984, another dystopian fascist novel. It’s far too clear to see the parallels in Atwood’s prose and the current living situation of every human demographic other than rich, white, male Evangelical. What’s even more terrifying is that the things Atwood describes not only could happen, they are happening in the U.S. even as I type this. Speaking as someone who falls into a number of minority categories (being trans for one), it really struck my nerves and fears in a way it didn’t ten years ago.
What Atwood really nailed, at least to my listening this time through, is all the small ways so many people break the rules. The intense strictures of everyday life in the Republic of Gilead are no way for people to live. Even those who benefit from the rules know that. Even they: the Commander, Serena Joy, the aunts, they all have their own small breaks that give them more reason to go on. The Commander with something as simple as playing Scrabble, one of the Marthas (I forget which one, Rita maybe) cutting radishes into rosettes and other shapes, all the people with cigarettes, mentions of the black market, all these things build up. They are proof of humanity’s survival and constant desire to be more than a basic nothingness.
Yet somehow, Atwood always managed to capture the sense of hope. Hope buried, lost, found again, shared, kept, coveted, reveled in. Even at its darkest moments, those where the writings and rules of the government of Gilead are at their worst, Offred and other characters demonstrate that they are still people. At their basest, most primal state, they are still people with wants and needs and the drive to find ways to survive and achieve those wants. Something as small as a single match hidden in a bed frame is a symbol of something strong waiting to break free.
I can’t help but compare it to another media tale of “the beforetimes” transitioning to the current horrific situation, told in a horrid way from one sufferer to the next: Valerie’s autobiography in V for Vendetta. The single match being hope, Valerie’s “one inch” being the last thing that cannot be taken from us.
Seeing the country I grew up in turning into a world where threat of my being disappeared is very real makes those small hopes mean a lot more. That one inch of self is critical. That one shred of being unapologetically who you are, in whatever small ways you can, is a valuable way to fight back. It might not be a lot, but then, it might be everything.
I digress, as I so often do. What I intend with these book reviews: my own thoughts, such as they may be. Sometimes, it may be a lot of focus on plot and character. It could be on craft, voice, even setting. Knowing me, a lot will just be general thoughts. Anyway, in short, just know that I read widely and enjoy talking about books in general. So expect that from these reviews.
_________________________
This is not a first impression of The Handmaid’s Tale. No, I first listened to this audiobook probably 10-ish years ago. But I just finished a re-listen and it was better than I remember. And I remember liking it a lot then. That said, here are my thoughts on it as it sits fresh on my mind.
Atwood writes beautifully. Simply put, it’s wonderful prose that, at least in my opinion, perfectly encapsulates the protagonist’s mindset. It isn’t until the epilogue that we discover this story was “discovered” as a series of audio cassettes, but that one revelation makes the whole thing make so much more sense to me, from a technical standpoint. The fact that I have absorbed it through audiobook only drives that further home. The delivery of the version I have, read by Claire Danes, truly feels like half of a conversation, like the oral passing down of stories from elder to child a generation or two removed.
That’s what so much of this feels like to me: like a story told, not one written. Obviously I don’t know if Atwood intended that to be its format from the beginning, or if it came along during the process somewhere, but I like to believe it is intended to be heard more than read, in general.
I’m writing this on October 13, 2025 in the United States, and it goes without saying that this book very much hits hard right now. It’s well-documented that Atwood took a lot of inspiration from Orwell’s 1984, another dystopian fascist novel. It’s far too clear to see the parallels in Atwood’s prose and the current living situation of every human demographic other than rich, white, male Evangelical. What’s even more terrifying is that the things Atwood describes not only could happen, they are happening in the U.S. even as I type this. Speaking as someone who falls into a number of minority categories (being trans for one), it really struck my nerves and fears in a way it didn’t ten years ago.
What Atwood really nailed, at least to my listening this time through, is all the small ways so many people break the rules. The intense strictures of everyday life in the Republic of Gilead are no way for people to live. Even those who benefit from the rules know that. Even they: the Commander, Serena Joy, the aunts, they all have their own small breaks that give them more reason to go on. The Commander with something as simple as playing Scrabble, one of the Marthas (I forget which one, Rita maybe) cutting radishes into rosettes and other shapes, all the people with cigarettes, mentions of the black market, all these things build up. They are proof of humanity’s survival and constant desire to be more than a basic nothingness.
Yet somehow, Atwood always managed to capture the sense of hope. Hope buried, lost, found again, shared, kept, coveted, reveled in. Even at its darkest moments, those where the writings and rules of the government of Gilead are at their worst, Offred and other characters demonstrate that they are still people. At their basest, most primal state, they are still people with wants and needs and the drive to find ways to survive and achieve those wants. Something as small as a single match hidden in a bed frame is a symbol of something strong waiting to break free.
I can’t help but compare it to another media tale of “the beforetimes” transitioning to the current horrific situation, told in a horrid way from one sufferer to the next: Valerie’s autobiography in V for Vendetta. The single match being hope, Valerie’s “one inch” being the last thing that cannot be taken from us.
Seeing the country I grew up in turning into a world where threat of my being disappeared is very real makes those small hopes mean a lot more. That one inch of self is critical. That one shred of being unapologetically who you are, in whatever small ways you can, is a valuable way to fight back. It might not be a lot, but then, it might be everything.
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