A non-answer to why I hated The Handmaid's Tale

[firecat]

Several people asked why I hated The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

I'm afraid I'm one of those people who tends to forget the details of books, movies, and such. As time passses, eventually I can only remember the mood I was in when I read/watched/listened to it and a general affection or dislike of it. The only thing I can remember about The Handmaid's Tale is that it depressed me in such a way that just depressed me.

To unpack that: A lot of books depress me but I like them anyway because I think the author has gotten at some essential truth that I don't often see gotten at, and the fact that we share this viewpoint gives me hope and makes me feel not-alone, even if it's a depressing viewpoint.

I didn't get that sense with The Handmaid's Tale - which isn't to say the author didn't get at any essential truth (given how many smart feminist people like the book, she must have), but just that I didn't pick up on it at the time I read it.

Comments

[clawfoot.livejournal.com]

I never liked the book, either, but that's mostly due to having read an essay on the topic by my brother-in-law, which basically pointed out that Atwood's only real point was that life would be hell for women... if life were specifically designed to be hell for women.

I wish I still had a copy of that essay, because my brother-in-law has such an incredibly witty, caustic style of writing.

[leback.livejournal.com]

Heh. That's nicely put.

I think what made the book interesting for me was the occasional resonance between the ways it depicted life's being designed to be hell for women and the ways I'm aware of that life *has* been so designed in some parts of the world. That the book was on one level so over-the-top ("This just isn't going to happen here"), and yet, from a global perspective, almost plausible ("But something like it happened there") was sort of affecting for me.

But these days, if I want to think about the life of women in misogynistic totalitarian states, I'm more likely to go for memoir than dystopian fiction.