This is a fantastic book. Atwood’s writing style in this book is consistent, but the plot line jumps around often between what is going on, her thought process, and what happened three or more years before.
Following Offred, we meet a Handmaid in a post-revolution (kind of?) America where some women have no rights. Wives, mind you, do have a bit of freedom, but are expected to be wives. In this future society, life has gone backwards and every person is put into an expected box determined by those in power. A Handmaid is someone who is assigned to a household for two years to try and get pregnant with a baby so that she is saved from the Colonies and the couple can have a child.
If you don’t like abstract reading, don’t read this book. This book is very abstract and has a bit of a frustrating but so very interesting ending. This is not a story to read to your kids, but I think this could be a great discussion book for teenagers.
Highly recommend, don’t yet know how the TV series compares.
