Reading: The Handmaid's Tale

I really liked this book. Which was a surprise because I really hated the movie. I tried to watch it a few months ago and had to turn it off. Book = really really good. Movie = really really bad.

I even liked the ending. When I first got to the end of the story, I didn't like it, but then I got to the real end and really liked it. (If you read the book that will make sense, if you don't ... then that just seems like a stupid sentence.) The end of this book wraps up enough of the open ends of the plot to give you some closure, but still leaves enough open to make you wonder.

I'll let Goodreads summarize the book:

It is the world of the near future, and Offred is a Handmaid in the home of the Commander and his wife. She is allowed out once a day to the food market, she is not permitted to read, and she is hoping the Commander makes her pregnant, because she is only valued if her ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she was an independent woman, had a job of her own, a husband and child. But all of that is gone now...everything has changed.

*****SPOILER*****HIGHLIGHT THE WHITE TEXT BELOW IF YOU WANT TO READ
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To anyone else who has read this - what do you think happened to Offred in the end? I like the way the book tells you that she got out and was able to at least start her journey to somewhere she could be free, but you can never be sure that she made it there. I actually found myself tossing around the liklihood that she made it out of the fictional Gilead (and when I start pondering endings I know it was a good book!). I also wonder what happened to Luke. The ending makes it clear that he probably died, but I still wonder if there was a chance he ended up somewhere else, like the Colonies.

And about the Colonies, did anyone else get flashbacks to The Hunger Games and think that the Colonies were possibly not real at all? For a good portion of the book I thought it was possibly something the government made up to keep people in line.

This was definitely a great read. I highly recommend it.

Want to see what I'm reading next? Check me out on Goodreads.