The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire - neither Offred's nor that of the two men on which her future hangs...
I... I honestly can't say much one way or another about this book. Partly because it's been a good few weeks since I finished it, and my memory for my own opinions is surprisingly terrible. I liked some parts of it - I have illegal amounts of love for the word use in this. There are things like "the shape money takes when it freezes," and "I feel like the word shatter," and they fill me with ridiculous amounts of glee. I like the way past and present and actual present all mix up together and I wish I could do that half as well as Margaret Atwood does. I love the Historical Notes at the end, because they fill me with ridiculous amounts of it. I love the world that's been built because it pisses me off and kinda scares me a little, and I love that it's effective.
The thing is, I just... Looking back, I don't give a damn one way or another about the characters. The characters Offred remembers are amazing - Moira for example, is remembered and built up in Offred's mind and ours, and the deflation near the end is fabulous. But the characters she's with, and sometimes Offred herself, I don't care about. Some I like a little, some I don't, but once I turn the page I forget them, and that makes me sad. I want to care about them - and I actually want to have studied this book at school, because a) my life would have been more interesting, and b) I have the feeling that I've missed things I would have seen if someone else had pointed them out to me, like the suggestion for Offred's real name - but I don't, and no matter how much I love the writing and the worldbuilding, if I don't care about the characters then the book's missed the mark.
I'll have to read it again to catch everything, and maybe I'll give a damn this time round, but now... Eh.
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