The Handmaids tale

[DumbledoresArmy]

Anyone else planning on watching this at 9pm on channel 4?

If you read the book and enjoy it I remember really liking Bluebeard's Egg which is short stories by MA.

I like the fact that there'll be a sequel because the end of the book was quite stark and open ended which was chilling but a bit unsatisfying for a reader!

Dame don't forget Alias Grace which is an all time favourite of mine.

Fascinating article by Atwood. The Book, The Power, which came out recently is also an excellent book ( and is also being made into a TV series).
It's about a future where girls and women have power over men due to being able to give them electric shocks from their finger tips. At first it's enthralling seeing how the women right the wrongs perpetrated against them from men but then it gets more complicated...

Well worth a read!

www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/02/the-power-naomi-alderman-review

i saw MA talk ( not so stealth boast) and got to ask a question ( double boast) ..i asked her if she deliberately left endings vague and somewhat unresolved to allow the reader to interpret events themselves or use their imagination...or was it just a lazy way of not having to wrap up a novel...i am sure loads of us MA fans have heard her speak or met her and know she is incredibly sharp, and funny...well i was a bit rude i thought asking if she was lazy in her endings but she actually laughed and answered that she thought that was a fair question and she had never thought vague endings would be interpreted as 'lazy'....she then cleverly turned it around and asked me what i thought...did i think she was lazy ? I went bright red and spluttered a bit and sat down

Ha ha ha how funny

wpmedia.news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/margaret-atwood.jpg?quality=75&strip=all&w=310&h=465 did she look at you like this?

it is funny now ....

OMG...yes just like that....i an a well read, well educated highly successful professional but felt about 5 yrs old and a parachial troglodyte when i heard her talk..she is amazingly fiercely bright

i have just seen that netflix is producing Alias Grace for tv , and will be shown in sept 2017...how exciting..another fab MA book, but not my fave, my fave is the heart goes last..hope some one adapts that too

Oh, that's exciting, but also a bit anxiety-provoking... Alias Grace is my favourite Atwood and I will hate it if they get it 'wrong'.

I loved Alias Grace too- will be really interesting to see it dramatised.

Good so far.

Oh it is so good. I am loving the series. I haven't read the book (no idea why actually) so happily ignorant of any changes.

In the scene last night where June has a flashback about giving birth, who were all the people outside the hospital holding some sort of demonstration or vigil?

And what is the destruction of the churches all about? I had assumed they were rihgt wing Christians, is that not the case?

what is the destruction of the churches all about? I had assumed they were rihgt wing Christians, is that not the case?

Could it be shades of the Reformation, in that churches were thought evidence of Papism etc?

Any Christian sect that isn't them, is outlawed. In the first episode they hang someone wearing a clergy collar. Hence the destruction of the churches. Quakers are aiding the resistance but they can't declare themselves as quakers.

As well, those were catholic churches and a priest - the priests and nuns staying celibate, and staying to their principle of sex only within marriage wouldn't conform

steppemum, I wondered that too; an online recap/review I read said this: 'Offred pulls up to the hospital as if she’s a celebrity, greeted by a raucous crowd openly praying hers would be a healthy baby.' Emphasising the birth rate/fertility issues then; also the heightened religious fervour.

Trump and The HandMaids Tale

Funny or Die's trailer. I found the bits with Melania really chilling.

I've watched the first two episodes and it's very good. Far too much to think about. There are women being enslaved and raped now. I want to find out what I can do to help them.

I found for me parallels between the birth scene and rl. The wives having the idealised birth and then making sure their hair is perfect before meeting the baby and the handmaiden having the painful, unphotogenic version supported by women who had been there before. All whilst the state sanctioned staff flaps round telling her to breathe or push. The way women are treated around pregnancy and childbirth in the uk felt not a million miles from how the handmaidens were treated.

What do the normal people do? Those who don't have good ovaries, aren't useful to / acting against the regime.

Are they allowed to get married/have normal jobs and lives or os everyone assigned a job in the regime?

Less, there are no 'normal' people - everybody is either part of the system, whether voluntarily or by coercion, or part of the resistance (of which we have not seen much yet). Ofglen was part of the resistance or at the very least had contacts there.

Thanks Pacific. I'm finding the flashbacks really interesting, showing how things went from normal to out of control, babies being stolen... till, I'm guessing the far right Giliead regime managed to take over with promises of maximising childbirth.

I'll have to read the book again.

Lessthan...for me the most chilling bit of whole story is the slow insidious creep of the state...the very slow removal of women's rights...which at first seem positive moves towards making women safer... And by the time many realised the true extent of the states plans it was too late. Last year there was a call for women only carriages on trains....to ensure women were safe from abuse or assault... It seems a nice reasonable, sensible idea...but how about when it then becomes women have to travel in those carriages...because their safety cannot be guaranteed.... See how easy it could be for a regime to manipulate us into accepting removal of freedoms