The Handmaid's Tale

Where to start with this book? I guess I'll say what I liked and what I didn't like.

Liked:

The idea of this story. I'm all for dystopian, post-apocalyptic and so on books. The idea of women and men becoming sterile and having trouble making children, thus in the long run, having the threat of the human race dying out; is a really good idea.

The Eyes. The black vans pulling up and kidnapping people in broad daylight reminded me of Nazi Germany with the SS and Gestapo. Of the people in charge going mad with power, that they can do all of this and everyone turns a blind eye to it.

Moira. The one woman in this book who wasn't completely useless or dumb as a sack of potatos. A shame this book wasn't about her.

Didn't like:

The story felt all over the place. At the end (spoiler) the author gives a half assed reason as to why it seemed like this, because Offred had recorded her story on cassetes that were never labeled so years later the Professers who found the tapes had to guess what went where. It was a very lame excuse. The story didn't connect well and took me right out of it whenever it would change.

Offred herself. I get after having her family and rights and everything stripped from her, will change a person. But god damn I could not feel for her. She was a whiny little coward, she even says so in the book. That she'll tell the Eyes anything they want to know. She's also stupid as hell. She doesn't plot or plan to escape in detail, she just thinks of half assed ideas and never puts effort into them. Like an airhead...one second the idea starts to form and then the next she's thinking about flowers or something. Moira was a way better character and I wish the story had been about her, with Offred being the side character.

The sexism. Now I've read that people call this book 1984 but for feminists and how it's about women's rights and all that...but it's sexist. I know it's meant to be since the story is about a goverment power (?) who takes all the rights away from women and treats them as objects. But damn, when you have a shitty weak main character that just bends over to this BS and takes it...it loses the “feminist point”. I'm not a feminist even though I'm all for equal rights, so maybe I missed that part, but this book screams sexism.

The ending. It's bad. Hands down one of the worst I've ever read. It's like a TV show with that cliffhanger...and then it's done. Unless there was a follow up book (?), it just leaves off with a cliffhanger. Oh there's that crap about the Professor's but that's not an ending. Not a good one at least. It leaves so many questions unanswered. Like what happened to Moira and Offred? What about Offred's daughter, husband or Mother? The daughter is alive and adopted by a Commander and Wife but nothing else on her. Husband...dead or alive? At parts in the story it make's me think Luke is dead, other times I think he's alive? The Mother was seen in a film by Moira...that's it. And Nick...we can only guess what happened to him as well. This book just left me without answers and that's the sign of a piss poor book.

Overall feeling:

I'm glad I read it because it was a different take on dystopia from what I've read, but it was poorly written and left a lot of questions unanswered. I won't be reaching for it to reread it for some time but I also won't be chucking it into the donate pile. It's just good enough to sit on my shelf, but bairly. I wouldn't recommend reading this unless you ran out of dystopian fiction to read.