My Five-Star Bookshelf, Part Two

 

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!