Book review: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Rating: 4 out of 5
I thought I’d read this years ago. Having read it now it wasn’t that familiar. So I guess I hadn’t. By the nature of the story I found it a challenge because of the lack of well described characters - which is how I normally engage with a book.
I was triggered to read it now because of this paragraph that someone posted on Twitter as reference to the current state of politics
“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction.”
And because I picked it up as a 99p Kindle deal.
Highlighted passages:
a revolving ball of mirrors, powdering the dancers with a snow of light.
Smells fishy, they used to say; or, I smell a rat. Misfit as odour.
with the large full eyes of a dog, spaniel not terrier.
Freedom to and freedom from.
There is more than one kind of freedom,
Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew
Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.
Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.
nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from.
That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction.
Originally posted to my Goodreads account