Do not be put off by the fact this book is about misogyny and too big to read in the bath; it is utterly absorbing and so, so good. I couldn’t be bothered to re-read The Handmaid’s Tale and haven’t seen the TV series but it didn’t matter; just dive right in and you’re in the utterly recognisable hell of Gilead. Here, women are often the most enthusiastic oppressors of other girls and women. As Aunt Lydia, the most politically powerful of the three female narrators explains, “better to hurl rocks than to have them hurled at you…They knew that so well, the architects of Gilead. Their kind has always known that.”
There are echoes here of every kind of misogyny, cruelty, religious and social oppression and general fucked-up-edness humankind has engaged in towards other humans, and continues to engage in. As noted in the beginnning, “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Or as Aunt Lydia notes about concentration-like camps in the early days of Gilead; “the same wailings from the new arrivals, the same barking and shouts from the guards. How tedious is a tyranny in the throes of enactment. It’s always the same plot.”
I for one will be forever grateful to the wily and wise Margaret Atwood for granting us a SPOILER ALERT happy ending. God knows we need one.
