Audie Award, Fiction, 2013
Margaret Atwood’s popular dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale explores a broad range of issues relating to power, gender, and religious politics. Multiple Emmy and Golden Globe award-winner Claire Danes (Temple Grandin, Homeland) gives a stirring performance of this classic in speculative fiction, one of the most powerful and widely read novels of our time.
After a staged terrorist attack kills the President and most of Congress, the government is deposed and taken over by the oppressive and all controlling Republic of Gilead. Offred, now a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Despite the danger, Offred learns to navigate the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules in hopes of ending this oppression.
The Handmaid’s Tale is part of Audible’s A-List Collection, featuring the world’s most celebrated actors narrating distinguished works of literature that each star had a hand in selecting.
Such a great read! No spoiler alerts, feel free to read. When we as Americans look back at the past of our country we find it hard to put ourselves in the shoes that were filled before our time. We find it hard to relate to women who have before us been considered as property, we find it hard to imagine a time when women couldn’t vote, or we find it hard to believe that women were contained in homes for domestication because it was all that was expected of them. Today’s women have many freedoms…
Good Book! Should not be banned! Offred remembers a time when she was free; when she had a job, a husband, and a child. However that’s not the life she lives anymore. If you could even call her life living. Now she is a Handmaid who is only valued for her ability to reproduce, unlike most of the population, her ovaries are still valuable. Her current home is with the Commander and his wife, where she hopes the Commander will get her pregnant before they decide she’s of no use anymore. The Handmaid’s Tale is…
What kind of world we could be if we stop valuing the diversity of all people I first read The Handmaid’s Tale around the time it was published in 1986. I was just 22, a sheltered young thing. I recall wondering what everyone was raving about, since only the top story layer of the book connected for me. Now, with decades of life experience behind me, I see that this is a deeply moving, complex book. I’m so glad I decide to read again just at this moment in time.Â