sarahxify's Reviews (703)

I found this hard to get into at first. The prose is sparse and pared-down, and the characters are quite flat, in my opinion. As the book went on, I still wasn't particularly convinced by any of the characters, but the story was very compelling. The author writes busy scenes set on the streets of Armenia and isolated farm scenes in the Australian book, and somehow gives them the same feeling of loneliness and despair whilst also having a very strong sense of place. This was incredibly well-done, and I enjoyed the book and its overall mood.

This story was incredible and very eye-opening. The main character, Naila, was very much a teenager, which I normally find really irritating to read and don't enjoy. In this case, the voice worked perfectly and made Naila's story even more heart-wrenching.

Overall, I really liked this. At first I struggled with the way the plot jumped back and forth, but in the end I thought it was a really clever way of getting into Jake's head, with all these memories from her past jumbling around.

My favourite storyline in the book was the present day one, so I was a little disappointed there wasn't a great deal of closure for Jake here. I also felt like the character of Lloyd wasn't very well-explored and that there were lots of details missing from his story.

I wouldn't recommend the audiobook version of this; there are quite a few different accents and the narrator is inconsistent with them, which can make it a bit confusing at times.

I don't know if I am just missing something here, but I struggle to see why this book is so highly regarded. It's interesting and the world Atwood creates is certainly thought-provoking, but to me the book just seemed like a bit of a relic of 1980s feminism. I found it quite boring for the most part and didn't really believe in the story until I had nearly finished it. I found it very hard to believe that a Western society would go through the dramatic shift portrayed in the book in literally only a couple of years. Particularly, I thought there was just too much order and subservience for the time frame.