If you're a big fan of Margaret Atwood, read this book. It has a
similar feel about it. I'd almost say Roy is more Atwood than
Atwood is.
Otherwise, don't bother. This book had the feel of one written
expressly for the purpose of being assigned reading in a high
school English class. It's almost as if the author set out with a
list of pseudo- deep themes typically discussed in Modern and
Popular literature 2A1 and worked from there, rather than starting
out with any semblance of storyline or character development.
Really, it's the poetic language that makes this book a
particularly agonizing read- should it simply be cut out, though,
the book would be about ten pages long. I appreciate Roy's goal of
trying to reproduce the essence of a child's thoughts with this,
but really, after a few pages, it becomes extremely painful, and
all I could think about through the whole thing was when it was
going to end. To top it off, the characters, what little was
developed, were completely unlikeable (I was happy when a bunch of
them died) and the storyline was ripe with cliche.
A book as forced as this makes one actually appreciate how
comparatively little pain The Handmaid's Tale inflicted upon the
reader.
What a disappointingly overrated read.