“Could it happen here?”

I’ve given it some thought, and I’ve decided that’s not a helpful question to ask about a dystopian novel. More on that below, but first I’d like to tell you about a little book I read called The Handmaid’s Tale. 

This fall, eveningwear color trends are vermillion, crimson, terra cotta…

After a hostile takeover, the U.S. has become the Republic of Gilead, a society founded on Puritanical principles. Ah, how things come full circle. At the same time, birthrates suffer as environmental pollution handicaps a woman’s ability to carry a healthy baby to term. Offred (named for her current Commander “Fred”) is one of the Handmaidens forced to serve as a surrogate mother and sex partner for an officer. The Commander’s wife is also very present for these desperate baby-making sessions. The old Commander, however, wants to make Offred more than a monthly pounding post and begins inviting her to secret sessions in his study for… Scrabble.

Fun Fact: Reading the sections with Scrabble, creepy threesomes, and Bible readings on Rachel and Leah with a Barry White song playing in the background adds an irresistible layer to the proceedings.

Separated from her husband and daughter, Offred longs for information on their whereabouts– assuming they’re still alive. She begins seeing cracks in the society’s preachy facade, and perhaps even a chance for escape.

In these stories, of course, things must get better before they get worse. Once the protagonist begins enjoying some freedoms, you should only dread the fall.

Prude New World

You’d think that the rarification of childbirth would make women all the more precious, improving their status, but it does the opposite; here, their childbearing ability supercedes them as people. Women judged to be barren are cast off to “The Colonies” as “Unwomen.” Even those who might be fertile are treated with delicacy instead of respect: no reading or exercise for you, my girl– wouldn’t want to spoil those ovaries or whatever.

But nobody wins in this system; Atwood herself doesn’t consider this a strictly feminist novel. The pious women who propped up this patriarchy are unhappy, the cannon-fodder beta males who might be issued a wife are unhappy, even the Commander is unhappy in his lack of having a real partner to connect with. The authors I admire most are those who show authentic sympathy for their ideological opponents without acquiescing to them, and Atwood shows herself to be one of these.

Story-wise, this thing’s a pageturner. Not just from the plot intrigue above but also the anticipation of an explanation. As Offred’s narrative alternates between past and present, Atwood goes hopping back and forth over “The Thing That Happened” (a tongue-in-cheek term from Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey I’ve adopted for every dystopian story), and this creates tension as the clashing realities of the before and the after squeeze together: “Tell me what caused this! What was The Thing That Happened?” The Handmaid’s Tale makes the transition between the Life Before and the Life After seem… hardly a transition at all. Instantaneous, really.

Which presents a problem. 1984, Brave New World, Anthem, The Hunger Games… none of these stories features a protagonist who’s seen both the before and after, and now I know why. It’s an incredibly tough sell. Normally a dystopian novel can sort of brush aside the catastrophe, if it bothers to describe it at all, but The Handmaid’s Tale can’t do that. The head-spinningly fast regime change is now part of the plot and has to be addressed for plausibility, and if you can roll with the idea of a fringe group machinegunning the entire Executive and Legislative Branches to feeble public response, then you’re probably very, very nice to books.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t judge a dystopian novel on the likelihood of its nightmare scenario: that just turns the book into 300-page slippery slope fallacy. Dystopian lit’s aim isn’t to be predictive so much as insightful on the present. I’m confident that The Handmaid’s Tale will never happen in the U.S., but I recognize the seeds of that fictional society plunked into the soil of the one I’m living in, and regardless of whether they’ll sprout or not I find them unacceptable. It makes me hyperaware of things I already know to be wrong.

Hyperawareness is what good dystopian lit gives you. After you read about a bronchial epidemic that wipes out most of the world’s population, you’ll shudder when someone behind you in line has a coughing fit.

Overall, The Handmaid’s Tale can stand with the giants of the genre, as far as I’m concerned. From Atwood’s prose to Offred’s introspection, every little detail matters, and it’s an entertaining read. Beyond that, its insights on gender politics are at once fair and uncompromising, and I give a thumbs up to teachers who place it on their syllabus. If they’re in Texas, though, they might have some trouble.

Read it if

1. It’s time for some good speculative fiction from the ladies’ perspective

and

2. You can handle criticism on the idea of the “Christian state”