Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Those of you who know me well know that I normally read only
hand-picked, highly recommended Speculative Fiction. For whatever reason, very
little under the umbrella of this genre appeals to me. The Handmaid's Tale,
however, is a speculative fiction that I would recommend to anyone. And,
regrettably, as the years go by, elements of Atwood's imagined world are
realized in our own world more and more frequently.
The brief plot summary is this: much of the United States,
now called Gilead, has been taken over by extreme Christian fundamentalists. Women's
rights (along with the rights of non-whites, gays and lesbians, and other
people identified as undesirables by the leaders of Gilead) have been quashed,
and a caste system has emerged among women, due to widespread infertility as a
result of environmental toxins. The story of the regime change is told by a
handmaid now named Offred; through her telling we learn about what led to the
change, how life continues under the new regime, and what potential exists for resistance
under fanatical rulers. The novel is exquisitely written, rich with word play
and images that linger.
I read this book in my first year of university. I bought it
one Saturday afternoon, started reading it as soon as I got home, and did not
move from my seat until I finished it about ten hours later. It was completely
transfixing, particularly for a reader who did know many of the conventions of
the genre.
Then again, the genre is to some degree irrelevant in this
text. There are feminist themes; there is political critique; there are
questions about religion and ritual; there are questions about the construction
of class, order, and power. But most importantly, Atwood was a poet before she
turned to novel-writing, and language play — serious work in this dystopian
world — forms the core of the text. This book opened my sixteen-year-old eyes
to the potential of contemporary fiction; by the following year, I had changed my
faculty and major, and started on the trajectory that has brought me to today.
I have re-read this book several times, and it always
impresses and frightens me. An essential text in my personal canon.
***
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Some fifteen years after first reading The Handmaid's Tale, I
read The Blind Assassin. This is a densely layered story within a story within
a story. Once again, I read this text very quickly, although not completely in
one sitting, as the structure of my life no longer permits such luxuries. It
is, however, transfixing to peel back the layers of this telling and observe
how intricately structured and clever it is.
What does it mean to write? Whose truth is true? How do we
go on when what we believe is revealed to be a lie? These are some of the
questions raised by this novel, told in retrospective pieces by Iris, now an
elderly woman. Her life has been marked by fame and loss, power and intrigue;
at the end of her life, she has decided to set her story straight, thereby
overturning decades of "knowing" and the comfort of conformity. Like
many of Atwood's strong woman characters, Iris is complicated, contrary, sometimes cruel, sometimes disturbing. And then there is the
book at the centre of the novel, the science fiction text "The Blind
Assassin." From the question of what it means to write, we are also invited
to ask what it means to read. The art of creation is never innocent, and it is
particularly troubled in this intersection of texts, lives, and lives-as-texts.
I believe I respond to this book particularly because of the
period it evokes — I still love the Modernists! But there is so much going on in
this text: mystery, betrayal, love, violence, courage, and, as always, Atwood's sumptuous
writing. The book rewards re-reading, and as I write this about I'm thinking
of reading the book again. While it is a very different experience from that of
reading The Handmaid's Tale, The Blind Assassin will captivate, frustrate, and unsettle
you. The feeling of this book remains with me. I hope you will experience it,
too!