Book Review: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

“Better never means better for everyone... It always means worse, for some.” 

Hey guys,
it's time for another book review, as the 2018 Reading Challenge is going great. This is the fifth book that I've read in January. As you know I read Alias Grace by Atwood at the beginning of the month and I was amazed by the story and the writing. Unfortunately, this didn't happen with The Handmaid's Tale.

GoodReads Summary:

Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are valued only if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now... 

My thoughts:

Spoilers

I was interested in reading Atwood's other works, so I chose this one as it got extremely popular in the last year as the TV series got released and won Emmy. There are a lot of differences between the book and the TV series but I'm not going to spend any time on them as this post is going to become enormous.
Now, the plot of the story seemed interesting enough, but I literally had to push through the pages as I became less and less intrigued with Gilead's world and Offred's problem. It's a dystopia forcing women to be living, yet again, under strongly patriarchal society. Everything is masked under the pretense of being safe and secure, and of course making sure the mankind doesn't die as the number of women who can bear children is drastically limited. 
From the summary you already know what is Offred's job. How can a woman get pregnant if she has sex once a month and why they thought it would be a good idea is beyond me. Of course, it all leads to the Bible and how Rachel, who was wife of Jacob, had the great idea of him having sex with their handmaid so Bilhah could get pregnant and Rachel and Jacob could finally have children. This was the story from which the Gilead's society had the perfect idea for the Ceremony when the so called Commander has sex with the Handmaid and his wife is holding her hands while he's pounding her.
Offred is shown as a cautious person, who is too beaten up to protest or to join the Mayday, which is a sort of this secret opposition which is preparing to fight and overthrow the Government. And yes, Ofrred thinks of herself as part of it but the only thing she does is talk with her friend about how awful everything is. And after her friend is caught, Offred is happy that she had killed herself, so she wouldn't name Offred as part of the organisation. Of course, you can be sympathetic with Offred: how many people are strong and brave enough to raise against the tyranny of a country.
However, the plot looked and the world looked too (excuse the language) pulled out of Atwood's ass. A society doesn't change overnight. And yes, through Offred's memories we can see that it was supposed to be a gradual change, but again a change that dramatic doesn't happen in the matter of months. It looks to me that the book was written simply for shock value and nothing more. It claims to explore feminist issues, but for me there was nothing of value in it. Even the reason of creating this society of Offred's Commander was dull and too random: In the previous society men couldn't feel and sex was too easy. Like we are supposed to believe that this is a legitimate reason for the creating of Gilead.
In conclusion, reading this book for me was a waste of time.