RARA-AVIS: Handmaid's Tale

From: Michael Robison ( miker_zspider@yahoo.com)
Date: 03 Mar 2005


Just finished this, a book I've wanted to read for years. I had started Rucka's SMOKER but a few pages into it, it struck a dumb note and I couldn't read another page.

HANDMAID'S TALE is close to Mario's description of noir without crime. A few months ago I picked up an earlier novel of Atwood's but couldn't become interested in it. This one starts out with the same atmosphere, a facade of studied boredom barely masking hysteria, something I don't think many authors do too well. Joan Didion did well by it in PLAY IT AS IT LAYS, and it was definitely what Woolrich was all about in I MARRIED A DEAD MAN.

What did I think of it? It was OK. I skipped some of the more tedious parts, something I rarely do. Generally, if I don't have it in me to read word for word, I don't have it in me to finish the book. The book was written only twenty years ago, but it had a dated feel to it. Blurb said it spent four months on the bestseller list.

Oh! And thanks, Mark, for the background information on Touch of Evil!

miker

        
                
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