The Handmaid's Tale on Radio 4's A Good Read

"The difference between a good book and life changer."

Exactly. When I read 1984 I thought that it was very good and it described things that happened in the world and all that. But THT haunts me and is never very far from the mind. It's frightening. It is one of the greatest books ever written, I think.

Sorry Slarti - I've just re-read your post in a different tone of head voice and realise that you were probably speaking in a jokey manner, and I've now gone and been a touch patronising.

Slarti - I think you're taking offence where none was meant.

Men can't understand it in the same way that women can't understand what it feels like to be kicked in the testicles - we can empathise, we can guess, but we'll never have an authentic, gut-wrenching reaction.

Not that men are too stupid, but they actually, really do lack the capacity because it can never happen to them.

1984

My a level English books were1884 and a hand maids tale- the latter opened my eyes to the world around me and changed my outlook forever, the former interested me and led to a long term interest in sf. The difference between a good book and life changer.

I personally think The Handmaid's Tale shits all over 1984.

Absolutely. I read 1984 once but I keep going back to THT. It's a much more sophisticated book and the gradual revelatory narrative fosters a terrifying empathy with Offred.

Men don't get it. They never truly will. That's the alarming thing, I think. Even the most liberal, forward-thinking, empathetic man in the world won't truly get it without actually being a woman.

THT is a remarkable book and one of the best I have ever read. It's stark warnings are clear and incredibly well communicated. There are only a handful of authors who have really had me in awe of how totally they controlled and commanded the work they produced and Atwood is one of them. Having said that I'm just a lowly man who doesn't have the capacity to understand such things so I've probably not got it at all really.

Agree, I found Cat's Eye and the RB un-putdownable. I should read THT again, for that matter.

I can't remember when I first read THT - more than 20 years ago anyway, and a few years before I got into the man-pleasing phase I went through in my 20s and 30s. It's a remarkable book, but I find Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride almost more interesting in terms of what they say about women and our place and rivalry in society.

I personally think The Handmaid's Tale shits all over 1984. They are both excellent books, and both very prescient (I re-read 1984 in the run up to the war in Iraq and was shouting 'yes of course' a lot mentally), but as a pp said, the long exposition in 1984 looks kind of lazy when you compare it to the growing realisation of THT, which makes it all the more terrifying because of all the parallels that you recognise without having it hammered into you. I think that type of writing is much more skillful and very difficult to achieve. I think she is a brilliant writer.

I found it chilling to read - full of silent, brooding threat and peril.

I teach THT at 'A' level and often boys and a few girls do not get it at all. I've made a collage of newspaper articles showing evidence of Atwood's claim that she wrote about nothing that hadn't already happened somewhere in the world.

I think it's Margaret Atwood's best book. I read others on the strength of that but nothing ever hit as hard as THT.

I reread 1984 about 18 months ago. I was struck by how much of it made me wonder if certain elements among my managers had been using it as a "how-to" guide...

The episode can be heard here - www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04svfs7

Is it online? I love THT, although failed to read the epilogue the first time I read it for some bizarre reason I think it's because I read it in one session and was very tired.

I really like A Good Read, partly because it's a good way of identifying total plonkers. People often don't agree on the programme and that's interesting but it's also a good expose of people who have not thought or read outside their own experience. He's not the first man on it to be befuddled by something that is not from the standard male viewpoint.

Must read 1984 again at some point to compare.

I heard it and agree that he just didn't get it at all!

Absolutely LordC - THT is scary and chilling.

1984 on the other hand I can take or leave. I found that a bit slow-paced personally (not THT - I thought that was very well paced), and because I've been reading SF for so long, I felt that other books had dealt with the ideas in it better (not that I can particularly name them now)

messy I agree. I find it always at the back of my mind (and sometimes at the forefront when it's really frightening). It is a book that once read cannot be forgotten.

And not just other countries but our own too. The idea that 100 years ago people would have thought me too stupid to vote or study for a degree definitely has an effect on me.

So true. I often think it has a subtle but real effect on us - the knowledge that our rights have only been recently won and that in so many countries we would lose them in an instant, be married off young, lose rights to our kids, to our bodies etc.

Even though it doesn't affect me directly it certainly makes me feel not so complacent with my freedom. I feel lucky but also insecure. It would be hard for men to accept that not ever having experienced it themselves.

IMO what is great about THT is its pace and the way it slowly reveals the workings of the new world to you. It's much better than say Brave New World which explicitly spells everything out for you. And the epilogue, well the epilogue is genius!