The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Genre: Science / Speculative Fiction
Rating: ★ ★ ★ / 4 Stars
Recommend: For young women and men for required feminist text of sexuality
Pros: Promotes vagina power
Cons: Quick-paced third act

Summary: After sterilization hits Republic of Gilead (former America), a group of religious men led by a military operation value women on their fertility. Offred is a Handmaid (sexual slave) forced to live with a couple and pray the Commander makes her pregnant. In this new disturbing life, she dreams of her past with her husband Luke and daughter.

Review:
Offred is a Handmaid; a fertile woman who lives with a socially and professionally successful couple - Wife and Commander - to have their children. In Atwood's world you are worth only what your vagina can do. Make babies? You're dwindled into a life of sexual slavery. Give one couple a baby, go onto the new pair and give them a baby - until your life and body is valued anymore.

Among this depraved ruling of womanhood lurks a sea of individuals cast aside. Unwoman who are brutal reminders of a time since passed; feminists, widows, nuns, lesbians, etc. who are exiled to the colonies. Econowives have married low-ranking men who take care of all household and child bearing duties. Marthas are older infertile woman who serve in a couple's households for responsibilities such as cooking and cleaning. Aunts trained and sentitized prospective Handmaid's about the older social laws of gender appropriateness. Wives, with their Commander husbands, are social and professionally successfully couples who take in Handmaids for childbearing.

You have no identity in Atwood's world, even if you are a Handmaid. You might be valuable to have a child, but the former world of leisure feels taken for granted. Lingerie, magazines, books, jobs, marriages and children are banned. Memories of wearing shorts, smoking cigarettes, falling in love are ghosts of your former life.

Through Offred's memories of the brutal brainwashing process in conception-like centers - where one girl was convinced into believing she earned being raped by the way she dressed and videos of women being torn open to are played daily - you feel the strangling of your own voice for not just your body, but dreams, goals, personality, brains.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the unique outlook Offred gives to us and the disturbing world she lives in, I felt Atwood's third act a bit disappointing. After the main character develops a courteous and odd relationship with the Commander, it feels like a lot of loopholes about other characters are loosely ended. Such as Janine who gradually loses her mind to her surroundings and Moira who is an outspoken warrior against the government. The conflict and the harsh reality of the world dissipates after a while. It's hard to grasp an understanding about the rest of the world when there seems to be resistance members all over the place. How do they work against the government? What makes the government as powerful as it is?

When gleaming at the current world as it is - right now - you can see the different voices emanate from the book. Magazines that tell you how to dress, use your body to get a man or keep a man, the worth of a relationship vs the suffering of being single, government exercising rights on how much you earn as a leader of a household, in the workplace, how your body should perform for reproduction. You almost don't wonder how much longer the world of Republic of Gilead is around the corner because some of its signs are out there in a way.