We need to talk about The Handmaid’s Tale.

My professor in undergrad recommended this book to me. In my memory, she put down my 40-page manuscript, bleeding red with her notes, and sighed.

“Something very basic is off—your dialogue is wrong. Your tenses shift,” she said.  Then she told me to read Margaret Atwood. I bought The Handmaid’s Tale and ate it in days, so quickly I didn’t absorb what I needed. The story was just too good; I needed to get to the end.

Five years passed.

The Netflix show came out.

I hadn’t finished my manuscript.

It became clear that if I were ever going to write my novel or watch The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu, I’d have to really read this book. And write a review.

All of the buzz I’ve heard surrounding the television show always involves the story-line. And why wouldn’t it? A shockingly well-formulated dystopian society that addresses troubling misogynistic realities within our own present-day society is enthralling to look into. To “what-if” until you convince yourself that it could happen tomorrow. To highlight, even further, the injustices we live with today. We like to watch train-wrecks, collapse and catastrophe—even more when they seem to be speeding towards us. Thanks, Margaret.

This is a great time to note that The Handmaid’s Tale was written in the 1980s.

But before we get into the plot, I have to touch on Atwood’s writing. I mentioned, briefly, in embarrassment, the comment my professor made on my tenses issue. It’s easy for me to slip in and out of tenses—a curse, actually. Lets call it a talent, which also happens to be a flaw. In this novel, Atwood manages to seamlessly slip between past and present—when society was normal and then when everything was changed.

How.

How does the story move so fluidly? One second our urgent need to know what exactly “The Ceremony” entails is undercut by a quick immersive flashback…then flows back to the present.

Formatting helps. And the novel reads vaguely stream-of-consciousness. Stay with me now, I’ll explain:

Offred, our protagonist, bounces around her story, sometimes shying away from especially painful flashbacks. Other times, she has no choice but to face them when something in the dystopian present reminds her of the past. It explains the flow and makes her human. It reaffirms that we, as readers, exist in her sometimes delicate, often distracted human mind.

But this isn’t a present tense with blind corners. She’s retrospective in a way that’s impossible in a true progressive present tense. It would be a journal, I think, but she’s not allowed to read and write. So it’s her own way of recounting her experiences as they happened.

Another note on Margaret Atwood’s writing: It’s Poetic. I found this in every line I underlined and, occasionally, in interesting formatting that read more like poetry than prose.

This is true of Atwood’s writing style, in general. I’m no Atwood expert or well-read fan (yet). But I did listen to A. M. Homes read Atwood’s darkly poetic (and oddly funny) short story Stone Mattress on The New Yorker’s podcast. And, stumbling through Foyles Bookstore today in London (Did I mention I’m in London? I’m in London.) I came across a collection of Atwood’s poetry. I didn’t know she wrote poetry. It all makes sense now.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood’s writing is poetic as she…

Plays with words [P.212]:

“Soothing to the eye, the eyes, the Eyes, for that’s who this show is for.”

Questions motives [P.155]:

“As a request it was opaque.”

Makes the intangible, tangible [P.126]:

“Envy radiates from them, I can smell it, faint wisps of acid, mingled with their perfume.”

Poetic.

One final note on Atwood’s writing deals with dialogue. In the past tense, the dialogue isn’t punctuated. I like this. I envy this skill of writers—to write clear dialogue without huge punctuation screaming, “someone is talking now” is a talent. Not overly difficult to do, but pleasant and easy to appreciate.

Lets proceed to the plot.

Take a momentary reading break to imagine me staring at a wall for five minutes asking myself how I can sum this up.

The Handmaid’s Tale is something all women carry in the back of our heads when we think of the past, the present, and the future. It’s a cautionary tale backed by indirect historical elements. It’s the story of what happens when everything goes wrong for women all at once.

Basic freedoms, body autonomy, and individuality are replaced with a hideously patriarchal society where tyrannical laws, backed by scripture, create an unrealistically conservative society. The story takes place a few years after the government takeover, so the old freedoms are still fresh in everyone’s minds. Rebels are still fighting the new government—spies and violence and paranoia abound.

It makes sense that Margaret Atwood wrote this in and around West Germany in the early 80s.

Things aren’t great for all of the men, but they aren’t as bad as they are for women. Sounds familiar to me, a black woman. Hi.

I don’t have much else to say about the plot. It’s dystopian and original, relevant and personal. I want to write stories like this, where the category/genre list looks hectic: Fiction, Political, Feminist, Fantasy. Where believable, factually dense worlds are created with scraps of ours. I want to suck in readers, take them far away, and spit them out… only to realize that they’d barely gone anywhere.

These are some of the things Margaret Atwood does well.

Five Stars.

My sister recommended this book to me with a tone that was more demanding than anything. See, she knows I’ve been “writing a book” that teeters on science fiction and explores some heavy topics.

Kindred teeters on science fiction and forcibly explores antebellum slavery.

It’s a complex novel, a timeless work of literary genius. Kindred is—for every ounce, page, sentence, word, letter—everything that I am trying to achieve as a writer. For this, I want to give it every star possible in the first paragraph of this review and encourage you to read it every few years for the rest of time.

Now that you have your orders, the review:

Kindred follows our protagonist, Dana Franklin, a young black woman in 1976, as she is mysteriously transported back to various points in 19^th century antebellum-era Maryland where her brown skin instantly brands her a slave. She is only “called” back in time when Rufus, initially a young boy—a red-haired, white, slave-owning boy—is in danger. Of course there’s more to the story, but I won’t expose any twists, though there are many.

I’ve been known to leap right into an analysis of the actual story, so easily wrapped up in the plot. Butler’s writing won’t allow it. Kindred is written in first person, past tense and it was the perfect choice. Perhaps I’m so enthralled with the point-of-view/tense choice because I am struggling to choose a tense for my novel, which also includes some graphic scenes.

Is it best to highlight the sheer terror of a traumatic moment by putting it under the microscope of present tense? Or, maybe, allow the reader to understand more angles of the issue as the protagonist recounts the tale using past tense? Either way, Butler chose past tense and I speculate whether it’s for the reason above or because, perhaps, we are physically transported to the past—it would make sense. I respect the choice and the idea that our narrator needed time to breathe and process the events before sharing them with the reader.

Another thing Butler handles effortlessly is the dialogue, creating a steady flow of conversation that folds naturally into the action despite a lack of dialogue tags. As a writer, I’ve come to understand that this works not only because of smart formatting, but also because all of the characters are, well, excellently characterized. Cut out the lines of dialogue, put them in a hat, shake them up, and you’ll easily be able to guess who said what.

When I picked up Kindred and read the synopsis on the back, I had to prepare myself for discomfort.

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum south. 

As a 26-year-old modern black woman, I steeled myself for whatever depiction of slavery neared. Surely it would hit me instantaneously—horrific and graphic from the start. Instead, Butler started in present day, explaining Dana, her history. This introduction not only characterized Dana as a likable, strong, intelligent woman, but a relatable one. We eased into her life, laughed a little and commiserated with her modern-day problems. When Dana was transported to the past for a brief moment, we were confused with her. When she went again, we finally understood with her. When she was abused, well, we felt some of the pain.

I also want to highlight Butler’s patience and the supreme death grip that she has on realism. For me, racism is difficult to write about. A writer needs to rely on their experiences while simultaneously removing themselves from a story to create a realistic tale, so of course I struggled when I found myself not fully hating one of the slave owners. At points I stopped and considered that these slave owners were humans—something I’d never done before. I didn’t like it. It made me uncomfortable, but it also made me respect Butler.

This isn’t a story about the broad topic of slavery. Butler dives into the broad subject, but also spends time in the quiet corners. She approaches the incapable white woman—paranoid, abusive, voiceless, and jealous in Margaret Weylin. She occasionally considers the complexities of interracial marriage across time with Dana and Kevin. Ultimately, however, the major themes that I took away from this novel speak to black endurance; the ability to exist and find strength, if not hope, in a world constructed to harm one for the benefit of others.

As the last few pages dwindled, I wondered how this story could possibly end. Our protagonist had been through so much, physically and mentally; she was scarred by a very real, tortuous anti-humane experience and that had to break something in her—alter her view of humanity. It’s frustrating, but understandable why Butler doesn’t allow her to go on unscathed.

Blacks in America today do not exist unscathed.

It took me about half a second to form a correlation between Dana’s experience and the larger experience of being black in America. To reexamine its roots and know all over again how and why it plagues our society, yet, to still feel shock when it is experienced—to be surprised by the sting when you knew it was there, waiting for you to let your guard down.

I recommend this book. I plan to read it again. And I plan to learn something new each time. All thanks be to Octavia Butler.

Five stars.