The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Rating: 4 of 5

The Handmaid’s Tale is a difficult book to review with its rather dark subject matter and distressing narrative.

I do like how Margaret Atwood writes. She seems “in tune” with people, spinning stories that are just on the edge of believable. I read her MaddAddam series a few years ago and enjoyed it as well. So I’m pretty confident recommending her in general as an author.

I watched the Hulu TV series before reading this novel so not much of what happened in the novel was a surprise. The TV series deviates very little from the book itself outside of adding things, like hope - the novel is really rather dark… For me the notable differences between the TV series and the Novel were

• The Commander (Fred Waterford), Serena Joy and Rita are all much older in the book. Fred Waterford is entirely grey haired. Serena walks with a cane and comes off as a woman in her late 40’s or early 50’s and Rita is described as a black woman in her 60’s
• The “Nick” character seamed more manly in the Novel. I imagined him as a young man with black ball cap you might see a military secret police wear a crew cut. More like a generic white dude from the mid-west. I probably wouldn’t have cast Max Minghella to play Nick. Not that he’s a bad choice. He’s just not the character I imagined
• The book was written in 1985 but Margaret Atwood imagines computers playing a much bigger role for Gilead in the novels. At checkpoints the Soldiers regularly check ID’s into a computer system. And in the Commanders office there’s a computer at his desk. In the Hulu Series Gilead seems rather low tech.

The Book provides a much more consistent narrative then the TV series. Several characters in the TV series do not exist in the book and Offred has a much more complex relationship with the Moira character. The TV series needs to take more liberties with the characters to be more “entertaining.

The Handmaids Tale can be a bit of a slog at times. There’s a lot of Offred’s inner voice. Which makes sense because she lives a rather boring and terrible life. In this way the book is compelling. Offred has depth and the story of her life is shared in a believable way. But I do confess to sometimes skimming over her emotional reflections that didn’t move the plot forward. I just wasn’t always interested in experiencing her sadness.

I think the Hulu Series and the Novel complement each other well and I recommend people enjoy both if they can handle the weird rape scenes found in both. My enjoyment of the novel was not limited having seen the TV series. I think the novel explores Offred’s mind in ways that the TV series cannot and the TV series builds a more “fun” story and a richer fantasy world then what was targeted by the original Novel. The two are complementary rather then competitive in my opinion.

Margaret Atwood has written a sequel called “The Testaments” I plan on reading this book as well.