The Handmaid's Tale

By: Margaret Atwood

Narrated by: Claire Danes

Length: 11 hrs and 1 min

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)

1984, with more nuance

When I read 1984, I felt it was missing something, but couldn’t put my finger on it. The Handmaid’s Tale showed me what that was - a clearly articulated reason and a history of how the regime came to be. The characters in this novel also strike me as more human, with well-articulated personal biases and inner lives, and more complex relationships.

Not one joyful moment…

This book was sad. There was nothing salvageable. There was not a shred of hope.

A Woman's Tale

Love the book. Scary view of a possible future. The things these women go through are happening somewhere in our world today and that is depressing when we face the truth.

Should this be categorized as a Horror ?

The performance by Claire Danes is spot on. The story line has all the fixing for a psychological horror but without the “ jump scares “

Loved the book and series !

Very well read. Every woman on Earth should listen to this so our rights are not taken away ! “It was the little things. I wish I had paid attention.”

Slow with too many metaphors

Slow with too many metaphors. Would have been an interesting story if it was written in a different style

Not my favorite…

Not my favorite, I can’t really give a concrete reason other than the fact that I guess it just wasn’t totally engaging for me. That being said, it was well written, and very well read.

Great premise, but not satisfying

I am a huge fan of CLARE Dane but  her narration of this novel was too monotone. It almost put me to sleep, and the story is riveting and well written. I wish that she had read this with more intonation and more passion.

Government Control through fear...it could happen!

This book was both amazing and completely horrifying to me! As a woman, mother, wife and daughter I could really relate with the main character Offred (the Handmaid). This book was a real game-changer for me. I will never look at the world again with the same eyes. This is an absolute literary masterpiece and I am so glad it was available on Audible. This is a MUST READ for everyone!
Claire Danes is magnificent as the narrator. I can't envision anyone else doing it. Just superb!

Riveting, even without a plot

There is no story to this book. Yet I would not call it episodic or slice of life. It is a tour de force stream of consciousness telling of what the world might be like under certain circumstances. It is securely anchored in the concerns of the 1980s, when it was written, but it is just as valid here in 2013, when some of the issues have shifted but the polarization is if anything worse than it was. It's not giving anything away to say that the book describes a reactionary dystopia where women's rights have been revoked. One of the interesting things Atwood does is invert what you would expect as a consequence of that. The female characters, bad and good, are still depicted as actual human beings. The male characters, for the most part, are mere automatons blindly serving the reactionary regime. I think this is Atwood's subtle way of pointing out that men as well as women are the victims of the repressive system that has taken power. There are a couple things I wish I could say about the ending but I will restrain myself. One thing I have to say is that it ends with one of the most beautiful paragraphs in all of literature.