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The Handmaid's Tale  By  cover art

The Handmaid's Tale

By: Margaret Atwood
Narrated by: Claire Danes
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Publisher's summary

Audie Award, Fiction, 2013

Margaret Atwood's popular dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale explores a broad range of issues relating to power, gender, and religious politics. Multiple Golden Globe award-winner Claire Danes (Romeo and Juliet, The Hours) gives a stirring performance of this classic in speculative fiction, one of the most powerful and widely read novels of our time.

After a staged terrorist attack kills the President and most of Congress, the government is deposed and taken over by the oppressive and all-controlling Republic of Gilead. Offred, now a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Despite the danger, Offred learns to navigate the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules in hopes of ending this oppression.

Cover Art by Fred Marcellino. Used with permission of Pippin Properties, Inc.

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©1985 Margaret Atwood (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

“Claire Danes sparkles in this performance…Danes’s Offred is complex, and her flashes of intense strength highlight her vulnerability. This is a consuming listen, thanks to Danes’s emotional subtleties.” (AudioFile)

Featured Article: The Handmaid's Tale—Book vs. Show


The Handmaid's Tale by award-winning Canadian author Margaret Atwood was first published in 1985, and has been haunting readers and listeners ever since. This chilling work of fiction depicts a future totalitarian state in which women are completely subjugated, while offering incisive commentary on patriarchy, reproductive justice, misogyny, religious fanaticism, and fascism. The Handmaid's Tale was adapted for television in 2017, and the Hulu series has sparked a renewed interest in the now classic dystopian novel.

What listeners say about The Handmaid's Tale

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great Story Made Greater by Claire Danes

Although not a sci-fi enthusiast, this book was so well written and performed that I was hooked from the first chapter. And stayed hooked all the way through the epilogue. Entertaining, and not too far fetched. Could this happen to us?

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

depressing tale of a possible future world

What would have made The Handmaid's Tale better?

I just found it pondering, depressing, however Claire Danes spoke it so wonderfully, so filled with the depressing reality of someone in that handmaid's position, it was very convincing - so much so I had to stop listening - too depressing!

Would you ever listen to anything by Margaret Atwood again?

no thanks

Have you listened to any of Claire Danes’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, but I would definitely try her again.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

extreme sadness in what the author thought a possible future could be - ugh!

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

A maudlin take on an alternate history

This book has an interesting premise: in an alternate history where sometime in the late 80s a series of environmental and nuclear disasters renders white people in the USA almost infertile, society devolves into patriarchal religious fascism where state-sanctioned - even mandated - sexual slavery goes on. Women known to be fertile are coerced into becoming handmaidens for the childless powerful. A rigid society with restrictions on everyone is imposed; life is simultaneously revered and discarded when personality is inconvenient.

We learn bits and pieces of this story through the stream-of-consciousness narrative of a nameless handmaiden, whose slave name is "of Fred," indicating that she is trying to conceive a child for Fred. It could have been a powerful reflection on the power of mass hysteria to remake history, if it weren't so excruciatingly maudlin. It sounds like a high school sophomore's diary, like a fourteen year old girl fat with amorphous resentment, an unconscious undermining of greater tragedy. Did you like that sentence? Because then you might like this book. Atwood doesn't limit herself to one simile when she could use three or four, and loves nonsensical metaphors such as "geometric roundness of the words." These could have been delightful if sprinkled judiciously throughout the book, but instead this type of sentence makes up 80% of the narrative portion, which in turn makes up 80% of the novel.

I am biased against stream-of-consciousness writing, as it can be hard to follow without actually slipping into the delights of magical realism. Here it was at times very difficult to understand. It's possible that in the book, reminisces are italicized, but Claire Danes, as talented and decorated an actress as she is, cannot italicize her voice. She brings an urgency to every sentence that conflicts with the self-described lassitude of the character, and she often infuses a laugh into her voice that turns bitterness into sardonicism and tragedy into irony. I felt like the narrator was untouched by the story, instead of recounting something that has happened to her. Plus, I've watched too much Homeland recently and I kept picturing Carrie Mathison in every scene. I found it distracting, hence the relatively low rating for the performance.

The end, which recounts faux future historians examining the narrative and trying to explain away some of the many flaws in the story, attempts to drive home America's fall from grace and gives some British characters the chance to ridicule the treatment of women during "The Gilead Period." It lets them pretend that they never treated women similarly, much as they pretend that slavery was only an American institution. I did find this summing up somewhat interesting, since it gave the author an excuse to probe the various aspects of such a society, but it mostly served to make the story feel outdated. I wasn't surprised to hear at the end that the copyright was 1986.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

One of those "I must be an Intellectual...

since I've read this!" books. Wow, what a waste of time and a credit. While the premise could have been great if better developed, it droned on and never came to a real conclusion. Very disappointing. Based on this book, I won't read another Atwood.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Ok

First, Claire Danes was the perfect choice to read this book. She got the feeling right - her intensity was perfect for such a dire story. That said, the story could have been more interesting. It had a unique view of an over-thrown government and what could happen when the rights of our citizens are revoked - mostly women's rights in this story. At first I was really interested, and I longed to hear more from the "Handmaid" about how this state of the country occurred and what the main characters were like before the change-over, but there was too little time spent on that. It just left too many questions and holes in the story for me. I felt a little unfulfilled as though I had been listening to a poorly-edited abridgment. I would, however, give Margaret Atwood another chance and listen to another of her stories.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

it might happen....


Sad, disturbing, borderline scary. What would I do?... But we human can adjust to just about anything... and there will always be love and the quest for belonging, for a touch and for an identity. Great, thought-provoking book. I wish the ending was more revealing...

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Ewwwww!

Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew ew this book is just ewww! Truly ew!

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Had potential bug just ugh!!

It took a bit to start getting into the story and I kept thinking it would get better. But the ending was horrendously boring and did not provide closure. Don’t waste your time!

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  • LW
  • 10-06-20

This was hard to get into

I rarely say a book is boring but this was really tough to get going in. Not much of a plot then the ending? What? I wasted an Audible Credit for this! If I had gotten a book, I would never have finished it. Sorry but this was a real snoozer.

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I just don’t get it.

I mean, I get the story, I just don’t get the hype for it. I’ve been waiting for this book to “start” for six hours. It’s way too descriptive for my liking. I couldn’t even finish the book. I find that I really don’t care how it ends. And usually I do! It’s not very often at all that I won’t finish a book I start. Normally I LOVE Claire Danes, so I’m not sure if it’s her performance or just the book that I didn’t like. Anyway, I’m very sad I wasted a credit on this book.

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