Reader Rating:
I decided to read this book because it had a ton of good reviews and it also sounded intriguing. I ended up confused and very disappointed. The story is told in a very disjointed manner and often jumps between present time and the past in a confusing manner. Usually authors use chapters to jump between time periods or in some other way, lead up to the fact that the person is having a flash back. This didn't happen at all in this book. One minute the main character is talking about what is happening to her at that moment and then she starts talking about the past for a while and then goes back to present time. Most of the time you read quite a bit into the flashback before you realize it's a flashback. The book also ends all of a sudden followed by an epilog of sorts, where a group of professors and historians talk about how there were tape recordings found and it turns out that the recordings was the main character's narrative. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.
This book is set at a time in the future, where the President and the entire US Congress is killed off. Everyone is paranoid of terrorists so they allow the Constitution to be suspended by a group of people. I couldn't tell who these people were, if they had political ties to begin with or what. Turns out, they were religious extremists. They gradually took away everyone's rights mainly women, and formed The Republic of Gilead. At the time, infertility was high so they took the concept of the handmaid from the Bible in order for Commanders to be able to procreate when their wives couldn't conceive. The whole thing was very strange. The story follows Offred, a woman who used to have a husband and child before Gilead was established. Her child was taken away and she was turned into a handmaid. She had no clue what happened to her husband.
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