Book 19: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Some books I feel like I just end up reading too late. This is another one that I managed to read right before the pandemic hit, which is very good; I don't think I would have dealt well with this story during the early days of isolation. It's a dystopian parable that both feels like today and also feels intensely of its time; so much of the Wives and Serena Joy specifically depicts an archetype of reactionary womanhood of the late '70s and early '80s that the dystopia imagined in the book felt less scary than I had feared it would. It's not our current world, or even the world of immediately post-2016. We are dealing with a different parallel, in different ways. It is also the sort of story that does just enough worldbuilding to allow for the current existence to be explained, and little more, and in a weird way right now I get caught up in the process of these things: how is a government overthrown, what are the steps, what are the specific failings. Sometimes I don't read books as well as they deserve, and with this one it's not exactly that. This book doesn't answer the questions I want to ask it, but it never intended to, which isn't a failing of the story.

This isn't quite a 'it's very good and worth reading but I can't say I enjoyed it' book for me, but it's pretty close.

Grade: B