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2021: blah blah blah blah
First off, I'll be completely frank: I thought that this book would tie back in to [b:The Handmaid's Tale|38447|The Handmaid's Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)|Margaret Atwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1578028274l/38447._SY75_.jpg|1119185] ~somehow~ and seeing as how I read both that and [b:The Testaments|42975172|The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2)|Margaret Atwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1549292344l/42975172._SY75_.jpg|66802198] in 2020, I figured now would be a good time to read it. I WAS WRONG. I knew they weren't written by the same author, and I had never heard that they were very related, I just knew that they both took place in Gilead, and thought that might lend a little meaning to Robinson's novel!
Again, that was very misguided of me and ultimately incorrect. The only connection is that both Gileads are filled with very RELIGIOUS people who live there. Robinson's novel is an external monologue from Preacher John Ames without much input from any other characters. Unfortunately, I happen to disagree with this very conservative, seventy-six year old man from Iowa who spends his days writing sermons, so needless to say, I wasn't very into it.
Maybe I just wasn't in the right headspace for this, or maybe I was too much on Team Jack Boughton when it comes to how religion can cloud a community's biases. There is just an overwhelming amount of Biblical references that I am very out of practice with. Ames' obsession with Boughton (and near complete ignorance of his own son) pays off at the VERY end of the book (I'm talking a decent twist in the last ten pages of this book). But it was again too little too late.
I should have stopped reading this book when I got to page 42 and the narrator was bemoaning the community's lack of appropriate response to the Spanish Flu pandemic (TOO SOON). Mostly, I'm walking away very confused at why, in 2005, a story about a stuck-in-his-ways preacher who lived in the early 1900s won the Pulitzer. This is the same guy who fell in love with a parishioner over thirty years his junior. hhmmm. I found it difficult to follow which generation the narrator was referencing, especially because it was written in the second person. Overall, definitely not my fav.
"Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable–which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live."
First off, I'll be completely frank: I thought that this book would tie back in to [b:The Handmaid's Tale|38447|The Handmaid's Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)|Margaret Atwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1578028274l/38447._SY75_.jpg|1119185] ~somehow~ and seeing as how I read both that and [b:The Testaments|42975172|The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2)|Margaret Atwood|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1549292344l/42975172._SY75_.jpg|66802198] in 2020, I figured now would be a good time to read it. I WAS WRONG. I knew they weren't written by the same author, and I had never heard that they were very related, I just knew that they both took place in Gilead, and thought that might lend a little meaning to Robinson's novel!
Again, that was very misguided of me and ultimately incorrect. The only connection is that both Gileads are filled with very RELIGIOUS people who live there. Robinson's novel is an external monologue from Preacher John Ames without much input from any other characters. Unfortunately, I happen to disagree with this very conservative, seventy-six year old man from Iowa who spends his days writing sermons, so needless to say, I wasn't very into it.
Maybe I just wasn't in the right headspace for this, or maybe I was too much on Team Jack Boughton when it comes to how religion can cloud a community's biases. There is just an overwhelming amount of Biblical references that I am very out of practice with. Ames' obsession with Boughton (and near complete ignorance of his own son) pays off at the VERY end of the book (I'm talking a decent twist in the last ten pages of this book). But it was again too little too late.
I should have stopped reading this book when I got to page 42 and the narrator was bemoaning the community's lack of appropriate response to the Spanish Flu pandemic (TOO SOON). Mostly, I'm walking away very confused at why, in 2005, a story about a stuck-in-his-ways preacher who lived in the early 1900s won the Pulitzer. This is the same guy who fell in love with a parishioner over thirty years his junior. hhmmm. I found it difficult to follow which generation the narrator was referencing, especially because it was written in the second person. Overall, definitely not my fav.
"Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable–which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live."