Book Review - The Handmaid's Tale

Photo credit: Goodreads

It took me two weeks, but I finally finished THE HANDMAID'S TALE. I have mixed feelings. There were times when I was really enjoying it, but there were also times when I found myself getting distracted and wandering away.

THE HANDMAID'S TALE is set in the future, but not very far. Due to the declining birth rate and the declining morals, a radical group of Christians systematically wrested control from the government, establishing their own laws and order. Women are again the property of men. They are no longer permitted to walk around freely outside, read, or hold jobs. They are sectioned off into one of four positions: Wives, Marthas (who cook, clean, watch the children, and do the general grunt work), Aunts (who are responsible for, among other things, the training and discipline of other women), and Handmaid's, who are given to powerful men with the express purpose of getting pregnant and having their children.

The book follows a Handmaid named Offred, who has been given to a Commander. Offred spends a lot of time sitting and thinking about the past, and I think that's part of what gave the book such a sluggish feel. I understand the necessity, since it paints a great picture of the juxtaposition of her old and new lives, but there are interesting things that happen to her even now. Not a lot, but some, and I didn't feel those, particularly her relationship with the Commander, weren't given enough page space.

I also felt this book represented a pretty wild extreme scenario. Through the flashbacks of Offred's life, she tried to show the natural progression between where we are now and where they wound up, but I just couldn't see it happening. Maybe it's naive of me, or maybe it wasn't explained well, but I still felt like it required a pretty big leap to get back to the total subjugation of women. It was different than when I read Neal Shusterman's UNWIND series, and I could see that with one or two things going wrong, we could actually wind up in that world. I didn't get that feeling with this book.

And then there was the ending. I don't want to give away any spoilers for those who haven't read it yet, but I was not pleased by the ending. Talk about unsatisfying.

There were good points too, of course. It was a very well-written book. I liked her use of run-on sentences and seemingly unconnected paragraphs to give Offred a distinct narrative voice. And I suppose there was realism within the world she'd created. While I'd have liked to see something bigger and more dramatic, the roles of the characters were consistent within the story. It made sense that they all acted the way they did.

This has been on my to-read list for a while, so I'm glad I finally got a chance to. It was a good read, even if it won't earn a place on my list of favorite books of all-time. I'd give it a 3 out of 5.

Book Review - Paper Towns

Photo credit: John Green's website

Last week, I read John Green's PAPER TOWNS. As a big fan of THE FAULT IN OUR STARS, I was excited to read another book of his, though the books are pretty different from each other. PAPER TOWNS is the story of high school senior Quentin Jacobsen, or Q, as his friends call him. One night as Q is falling asleep, the girl-next-door, Margo Roth Spiegelman, shows up at his window asking if he wants to help her get revenge on some of their classmates. This takes us through part one of the book: the story of Margo's revenge plan, which is wild and meticulously planned. Throughout this section, we get a very clear idea of who both Margo and Q are.

Characterization is a huge component of this book, maybe even more than in TFIOS. At its core, PAPER TOWNS is a study of the individual. It asks the question, "How well do we really know the people around us? And can we ever really know them at all?" Green spends part one setting up an identity for both Margo--the carefree, fun-loving girl--and Q--the quieter, more sensible one. And then he spends part two shattering those images.

Part two begins right where part one ended: the day after Margo's vengeance mission. Q has to deal with the fallout from that long night. He also learns that Margo has run away, something she does often enough that no one is particularly concerned at first except Q. And then it becomes the story of Q trying to find Margo. Sometimes his friends help, sometimes he's alone, but he spends the entire section trying to trace a series of clues to narrow down her location.

This is where the theme shifts, and we're introduced to the questions about how well we know the people around us. Q struggles with that throughout the section, wondering he really knew Margo, or if he only knew the version of her that she projected, the version that others thrust onto her. And through his journey, both he--and we--learn that she's not necessarily the person we thought she was. And neither is Q.

I don't want to give too much away about the ending, so I'll say that if part three has a theme, it's probably the same as the book's overall one: we're all connected. It's a long road for Q to get to that conclusion, but I think that's where he winds up.

I wasn't entirely certain of my reaction when I finished reading the book. John Green is a fantastic author, and I appreciated the lyrical twists and turns of his sentences maybe more than I appreciated the plot. While I liked the characters well enough, there weren't any that I was overly fond of. And I felt that sometimes the book got bogged down in its own rhetoric. The themes weren't subtle; they were hammered in with a sledgehammer. But the story was engaging, and I found myself power-reading through it because I was so curious to find out how it ended. Overall, I'd give it a 3 1/2 out of 5.