---
product_id: 42040517
title: "Handmaid's Tale, The (The Classic Collection)"
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---

# Handmaid's Tale, The (The Classic Collection)

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Handmaid's Tale, The (The Classic Collection) [Margaret Atwood, Claire Danes] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Handmaid's Tale, The (The Classic Collection)

Review: 1986 Novel Must-Read for Today! - I had purchased this book quite some time ago when a friend of mine mention it to me... I had thoughts of Fifty Shades of Grey which I had purchased because another individual had liked it... Let me say right away that I read less than 50 pages of the latter and stopped reading. On the other hand, when in a discussion with a good friend, I was talking about the latest attempt to control women, looking to stop the use of an abortion pill that was been on the market for decades... At that point, she cried "OMG, The Handmaiden is Happening! After that conversation was over and I was home, I pulled up my copy of The Handmaid's Tale. It seemed like I was led to be reading it now... I knew immediately what my friend meant. At the end, I began to read the Historical Notes, but at first overlooked the date 2195... I went in search of what is referred to as the Gileadean Regime. Which was to have been the time during which a religious group had taken over America... Suddenly I had to agree. The Handmaid's Tale was now moving forward as had begun during the beginning of the decade... See my blog post for relevant videos I found... Women have been talking about this book since 2016, in particular! The main character is a young woman, much like my friend, who has a loving husband and a child. Soon, both of them have disappeared and she never sees them again. As we watch the woman, now given another name, she imagines what might have happened to her family. And she strives to remember the past, what was happening in her life and in the world... She is not allowed to have any contact with that world; she remembers though and hopes she will not lose those memories--of Luke, her husband and her child, a little girl... Once during the book, a picture of her daughter was shared by the wife of the man who now owned her... She wants a child enough that she is willing to bargain with his Handmaid... There are three handmaids for his man. We never know exactly who or what he does. It is irrelevant since they are closeted away and are only seen when sex is to occur. Both of the prospective parents are included in this charade... It is described in the book; it is terrible to visualize... And then after been raped by her owner a number of times, she arranges through his driver to have her visit him in his office. Interestingly, he asks her to play a board game... As time goes by, he introduces a magazine no longer in print, having been banned, and allows her to sit in the room to read it; he sits watching her... and they talk. He shares that he and his wife no longer talk to each other like they once did. He misses that. She now talks mostly with the wives of other owners, as they are permitted to interact only with them... It seems that every woman who is living at the time, has been given a job in their new locations... Marthas, for instance are the cooks, obviously named after the two sisters in the Bible, Martha being the one who quickly prepares a meal when Jesus visits... But there is little to do about religion in this world in which has been created... except what is important to ensure that women know their places... the reason seems to be close to what is being spouted now... white women are not now producing enough children... something had to be done... work was no longer possible. The women needed to be free to be available for those times when it was possible to get pregnant. Nothing else mattered. The entire book is centered into one household full of women--and one older man. Other men may work for the man as well; but the women all had specific tasks. And those who "believed" in what was happening were called Aunts; they were to train, supervise, and, if necessary, punish the handmaids. A cow prod was used. Soon the woman who has a new name is comfortable enough with the head of the house to have him ask her if she would like to have an adventure... She is taken to what we would call a brothel, she is dressed for the occasion from old, use, sex-oriented clothing that has been hidden away after all such activities were forbidden in the world... Only men of the Gilead Regime were members of the Club... And, yes, it was a sex club where the leaders of the group participated in their sexual interests--beyond what were performed with the Handmaids... Sound familiar? As you may already have realized, many of the things that were now forbidden for women in the book have already started occurring, based upon the move by a presidential candidate and his followers. There have been many women caught by the state congresses to stop abortions for religious reasons, it seems. I am one of the many Christians who do not accept that the Christian Nationalist Party has anything to do with God our Father... And, for me, Jesus His Son... If you have had any questions regarding this matter, I highly recommend you start reading...before it, too, is banned... The Handmaid's Tale spotlights exactly what will be happening to any woman if the party candidate (or his down-ballot candidates) are elected into office in 2024. In my opinion, there is no better way to see how religion as a single authority results in America going backward in progressive changes made during the last 100 years. Voting will be eliminated... All books of any kind will be removed... Women will be divided into groups, some of whom will be training young women to have unwelcomed sex with their new owner(s). Wives will be...tolerated...or ignored altogether... We have already seen that rape and incest are not to be factors in deciding about having an abortion. Indeed, no medical issues can affect the birth moving to completion, even if the new baby dies in the mother's arms soon thereafter. She will then be expected to begin again to provide a way to provide heirs for old men whose wives are past the age... This book prophesized it; we have not choice as women--we must speak out against it! I consider this a must-read for every woman, and man who will be left without a wife or forced to give up all children from their marriage... Margaret Atwood watched what was happening. She wrote a futuristic novel to illustrate what she foresaw... I, too, believe, "The Handmaid Tale is NOW Happening..." GABixlerReviews
Review: A Punishing Pleasure - I knew nothing about this book when I bought and read it. I wish there were some way to review it without telling anything about it. The story definitely works better if you allow Atwood to bring you slowly up to speed. Stepping into the story with a knowledge of its setting and basic plot is bound to cause frustration, because Atwood parcels her secrets with great patience. So, if you want to enjoy this book as much as possible, and if you truly know nothing about it, then stop reading this review (and any others) and start reading THE HANDMAID'S TALE. Still reading? Fair enough. Atwood's story takes place in an alternate future where America (at least large portions of it) has been taken over by radical religious groups. The narrator of the tale lives in Gilead (in what we would call Maine), and she performs the functions of a concubine for a top-ranking political leader of this new, brutal regime. Everything in Gilead is (ostensibly) based on a religious (Christian) precedence, and so women's rights have been vastly curtailed. They are not even allowed to read. Told in the first person, the novel's prose is beautifully done, although it does begin to drone near the middle of the novel. Other reviewers have complained about the odd punctuation, fragmented sentences, and stilted structure, but if you make it to the end of the book, the narrator's strange approach to storytelling is fully explained. I found it rather poetic and insightful. Others (people who seem wedded to traditional novel structure) complain that it is insufferable. If you absolutely must have quotation marks, or if you can't stand run-on sentences, then step aside and read some Dan Brown or something. The book doesn't appear to have much in the way of a plot until you hit the middle point. The handmaid (her name is Offred, which is a title that indicates she is owned by her patron, a powerful man named "Fred;" the name is also a clever symbolic twist on the fact that all handmaids are required to wear bright red dresses) mostly just observes the world she is in for the first half of the novel, and her passivity gets a bit redundant by the halfway point. Atwood, seeming to know this, then sends the novel into more exploratory areas, and Offred is given a chance to witness other, less religiously pure, aspects of Gilead's society. Interesting still, although, again, little can be said to happen. I enjoyed this novel because, more than anything else, it is a excellently drawn portrayal of where religious fundamentalism and political fascism are rather easily intertwined. As a pastiche of moments/images that paint a picture of a world built on hypocrisy and the less-holy tenets of the Bible, the book works quite well. It is more a "imagine this world" kind of story, and if you are a reader who enjoys being submersed in new ideas and environments, the novel offers a lot of philosophical/political/sociological ideas to muse over. If you want action, cause and effect, intrigue, and conflicts leading to complications leading to resolutions, well, this is not the book for you. Because the book is so relentlessly symbolic as well as political, it is bound to bore some and insult others. The story is most obviously about women's rights and religious fanaticism, but it is also about humanity's self-destructive tendencies, the nature of fear and oppression, and the different shapes that insanity can take. It is a textbook more than a storybook, and this is hammered home in the final section of the novel. I won't tell you what happens, other than to say that the book, at a key moment in the story, takes a radical shift in its story-telling. For 95% of the novel, you are intimately involved, inside the head of poor Offred, witnessing and hearing and experiencing her world first hand (and usually in the present tense). For the last 5% of the book, you are so far removed from the contents of the handmaid's tale that it is a rude and (for me) somewhat unpleasant shock. The final moments of the book felt like Atwood trying to both ameliorate the reader's desire for clarification but also remain tantalizingly withdrawn; she spoon-feeds the readers some key data, while purposefully leaving vague the information that readers really want to know (let's just say that the Handmaid's Tale, like the Canterbury Tales from which the title was drawn, isn't exactly finished). I suppose this is just a final confirmation that this book is less about the handmaid herself, and more about the world she inhabited. It would have been nice for Atwood to craft a better end point for the story, or to at least offer a meager reward for the readers who were following Offred's story with patience and focus. But books like these are meant to be cautionary and theoretical rather than literary treats. This is not a fun story, nor is it exciting or clever. It is scary, dark, and unforgiving. For readers who enjoy theory, ideas, and the thought that there might be a meaning to life, this novel is a kind of beautiful punishment. You might not deserve punishment (Offred certainly didn't), but I think that's kinda the point.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #4,318,867 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #25 in Literary Fiction (Books) #390 in Classic Literature & Fiction #7,516 in Books on CD |
| Book 1 of 2  | The Handmaid's Tale |
| Customer Reviews | 4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars (174,801) |
| Dimensions  | 5.5 x 5.5 x 0.25 inches |
| Edition  | Unabridged |
| ISBN-10  | 1480560103 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-1480560109 |
| Item Weight  | 3.5 ounces |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 9 pages |
| Publication date  | July 22, 2014 |
| Publisher  | Brilliance Audio |

## Images

![Handmaid's Tale, The (The Classic Collection) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61gQoWXkRPL.jpg)
![Handmaid's Tale, The (The Classic Collection) - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/31kJaTkeFkL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 1986 Novel Must-Read for Today!
*by G***S on April 8, 2024*

I had purchased this book quite some time ago when a friend of mine mention it to me... I had thoughts of Fifty Shades of Grey which I had purchased because another individual had liked it... Let me say right away that I read less than 50 pages of the latter and stopped reading. On the other hand, when in a discussion with a good friend, I was talking about the latest attempt to control women, looking to stop the use of an abortion pill that was been on the market for decades... At that point, she cried "OMG, The Handmaiden is Happening! After that conversation was over and I was home, I pulled up my copy of The Handmaid's Tale. It seemed like I was led to be reading it now... I knew immediately what my friend meant. At the end, I began to read the Historical Notes, but at first overlooked the date 2195... I went in search of what is referred to as the Gileadean Regime. Which was to have been the time during which a religious group had taken over America... Suddenly I had to agree. The Handmaid's Tale was now moving forward as had begun during the beginning of the decade... See my blog post for relevant videos I found... Women have been talking about this book since 2016, in particular! The main character is a young woman, much like my friend, who has a loving husband and a child. Soon, both of them have disappeared and she never sees them again. As we watch the woman, now given another name, she imagines what might have happened to her family. And she strives to remember the past, what was happening in her life and in the world... She is not allowed to have any contact with that world; she remembers though and hopes she will not lose those memories--of Luke, her husband and her child, a little girl... Once during the book, a picture of her daughter was shared by the wife of the man who now owned her... She wants a child enough that she is willing to bargain with his Handmaid... There are three handmaids for his man. We never know exactly who or what he does. It is irrelevant since they are closeted away and are only seen when sex is to occur. Both of the prospective parents are included in this charade... It is described in the book; it is terrible to visualize... And then after been raped by her owner a number of times, she arranges through his driver to have her visit him in his office. Interestingly, he asks her to play a board game... As time goes by, he introduces a magazine no longer in print, having been banned, and allows her to sit in the room to read it; he sits watching her... and they talk. He shares that he and his wife no longer talk to each other like they once did. He misses that. She now talks mostly with the wives of other owners, as they are permitted to interact only with them... It seems that every woman who is living at the time, has been given a job in their new locations... Marthas, for instance are the cooks, obviously named after the two sisters in the Bible, Martha being the one who quickly prepares a meal when Jesus visits... But there is little to do about religion in this world in which has been created... except what is important to ensure that women know their places... the reason seems to be close to what is being spouted now... white women are not now producing enough children... something had to be done... work was no longer possible. The women needed to be free to be available for those times when it was possible to get pregnant. Nothing else mattered. The entire book is centered into one household full of women--and one older man. Other men may work for the man as well; but the women all had specific tasks. And those who "believed" in what was happening were called Aunts; they were to train, supervise, and, if necessary, punish the handmaids. A cow prod was used. Soon the woman who has a new name is comfortable enough with the head of the house to have him ask her if she would like to have an adventure... She is taken to what we would call a brothel, she is dressed for the occasion from old, use, sex-oriented clothing that has been hidden away after all such activities were forbidden in the world... Only men of the Gilead Regime were members of the Club... And, yes, it was a sex club where the leaders of the group participated in their sexual interests--beyond what were performed with the Handmaids... Sound familiar? As you may already have realized, many of the things that were now forbidden for women in the book have already started occurring, based upon the move by a presidential candidate and his followers. There have been many women caught by the state congresses to stop abortions for religious reasons, it seems. I am one of the many Christians who do not accept that the Christian Nationalist Party has anything to do with God our Father... And, for me, Jesus His Son... If you have had any questions regarding this matter, I highly recommend you start reading...before it, too, is banned... The Handmaid's Tale spotlights exactly what will be happening to any woman if the party candidate (or his down-ballot candidates) are elected into office in 2024. In my opinion, there is no better way to see how religion as a single authority results in America going backward in progressive changes made during the last 100 years. Voting will be eliminated... All books of any kind will be removed... Women will be divided into groups, some of whom will be training young women to have unwelcomed sex with their new owner(s). Wives will be...tolerated...or ignored altogether... We have already seen that rape and incest are not to be factors in deciding about having an abortion. Indeed, no medical issues can affect the birth moving to completion, even if the new baby dies in the mother's arms soon thereafter. She will then be expected to begin again to provide a way to provide heirs for old men whose wives are past the age... This book prophesized it; we have not choice as women--we must speak out against it! I consider this a must-read for every woman, and man who will be left without a wife or forced to give up all children from their marriage... Margaret Atwood watched what was happening. She wrote a futuristic novel to illustrate what she foresaw... I, too, believe, "The Handmaid Tale is NOW Happening..." GABixlerReviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Punishing Pleasure
*by M***E on May 23, 2012*

I knew nothing about this book when I bought and read it. I wish there were some way to review it without telling anything about it. The story definitely works better if you allow Atwood to bring you slowly up to speed. Stepping into the story with a knowledge of its setting and basic plot is bound to cause frustration, because Atwood parcels her secrets with great patience. So, if you want to enjoy this book as much as possible, and if you truly know nothing about it, then stop reading this review (and any others) and start reading THE HANDMAID'S TALE. Still reading? Fair enough. Atwood's story takes place in an alternate future where America (at least large portions of it) has been taken over by radical religious groups. The narrator of the tale lives in Gilead (in what we would call Maine), and she performs the functions of a concubine for a top-ranking political leader of this new, brutal regime. Everything in Gilead is (ostensibly) based on a religious (Christian) precedence, and so women's rights have been vastly curtailed. They are not even allowed to read. Told in the first person, the novel's prose is beautifully done, although it does begin to drone near the middle of the novel. Other reviewers have complained about the odd punctuation, fragmented sentences, and stilted structure, but if you make it to the end of the book, the narrator's strange approach to storytelling is fully explained. I found it rather poetic and insightful. Others (people who seem wedded to traditional novel structure) complain that it is insufferable. If you absolutely must have quotation marks, or if you can't stand run-on sentences, then step aside and read some Dan Brown or something. The book doesn't appear to have much in the way of a plot until you hit the middle point. The handmaid (her name is Offred, which is a title that indicates she is owned by her patron, a powerful man named "Fred;" the name is also a clever symbolic twist on the fact that all handmaids are required to wear bright red dresses) mostly just observes the world she is in for the first half of the novel, and her passivity gets a bit redundant by the halfway point. Atwood, seeming to know this, then sends the novel into more exploratory areas, and Offred is given a chance to witness other, less religiously pure, aspects of Gilead's society. Interesting still, although, again, little can be said to happen. I enjoyed this novel because, more than anything else, it is a excellently drawn portrayal of where religious fundamentalism and political fascism are rather easily intertwined. As a pastiche of moments/images that paint a picture of a world built on hypocrisy and the less-holy tenets of the Bible, the book works quite well. It is more a "imagine this world" kind of story, and if you are a reader who enjoys being submersed in new ideas and environments, the novel offers a lot of philosophical/political/sociological ideas to muse over. If you want action, cause and effect, intrigue, and conflicts leading to complications leading to resolutions, well, this is not the book for you. Because the book is so relentlessly symbolic as well as political, it is bound to bore some and insult others. The story is most obviously about women's rights and religious fanaticism, but it is also about humanity's self-destructive tendencies, the nature of fear and oppression, and the different shapes that insanity can take. It is a textbook more than a storybook, and this is hammered home in the final section of the novel. I won't tell you what happens, other than to say that the book, at a key moment in the story, takes a radical shift in its story-telling. For 95% of the novel, you are intimately involved, inside the head of poor Offred, witnessing and hearing and experiencing her world first hand (and usually in the present tense). For the last 5% of the book, you are so far removed from the contents of the handmaid's tale that it is a rude and (for me) somewhat unpleasant shock. The final moments of the book felt like Atwood trying to both ameliorate the reader's desire for clarification but also remain tantalizingly withdrawn; she spoon-feeds the readers some key data, while purposefully leaving vague the information that readers really want to know (let's just say that the Handmaid's Tale, like the Canterbury Tales from which the title was drawn, isn't exactly finished). I suppose this is just a final confirmation that this book is less about the handmaid herself, and more about the world she inhabited. It would have been nice for Atwood to craft a better end point for the story, or to at least offer a meager reward for the readers who were following Offred's story with patience and focus. But books like these are meant to be cautionary and theoretical rather than literary treats. This is not a fun story, nor is it exciting or clever. It is scary, dark, and unforgiving. For readers who enjoy theory, ideas, and the thought that there might be a meaning to life, this novel is a kind of beautiful punishment. You might not deserve punishment (Offred certainly didn't), but I think that's kinda the point.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review
*by A***S on January 16, 2025*

Já tinha assistido à série homônima de TV e achei ótimo o livro.

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