The Sheila Variations

Don't I have any female readers who went through an angry feminist stage??

I know I went through one ... and I read this book in the middle of it.

It's a great book - it's been compared to Orwell's 1984. I've read it a ton of times. It's really good.

Especially if you're in an angry feminist mood.

Margaret Atwood, Handmaid's Tale?

Yes. The angry femininst part gave it away, right??

Have you read it?

Bastardi non carborundum.

It's a terrific book, but not as good as Cat's Eye, which blew me away. Not that I remember a damn thing about it, except for her affair with the professor and her stint doing artwork made from lint from clothes dryers; but I was stunned by it at the time.

That's Cat's Eye, I mean. Handmaid's Tale I know pretty clearly, at least in the broad strokes. The weird manners of the evenings with the Captain (?) and his wife, or is it Lieutenant? And the driver, was he named Ned? The scene in Toronto when she first realizes that her credit card doesn't work any more is truly amazing, closer to today than I'd like to ponder.

Oh God. Yes!

Cat's Eye I think is her best book. I've written about her before. I've hated eveyrthing she's written since then - and I LOVE her. I keep waiting for her to be "back" (kind of like Tori Amos) - but I guess I need to give up now.

The Handmaid's Tale is prophetic in many ways. It's what the Islamic fundamentalists want to do to all of us over here.

A very good book.

But Cat's Eye is superb - I so agree!

Sadly, it is what all religious fundamentalists want to do to us over here.

When I first read The Handmaid's Tale (I seem to recall Atwood getting very exercised over the article in the title), it was All The Rage. This would be about when it came out, on the hump of the 80's. It had devoured the eager young minds on campus so fast that it was already feeling old when I got to it.

To be honest, I didn't like it much the first time. As a sci-fi guy, my uh-oh whiskers were already tuned to go off at the slightest brush of uncertainty (though I very much liked Doris Lessing's plunge into the Shikasta series, which was largely loathed - I think I only read the first book, they vanished so fast and so hard). It set me off in a dozen small ways. Sci-fi is a discipline, as is any genre, and "real" writers tend to forget that. Atwood left some sloppy ends showing, and overforced her hand often.

But the first flush isn't always the real heat, and it is a book that has lasted with me and others far longer than I would have guessed. A total rip-off of 1984, of course. But in the end that's all right. The vision isn't original, but it's mesmerizing the way she sees it. And her penetration into the deeps of her characters is always fantastic.

I read Atwood when I can, but most of it doesn't move me. It's always interesting. My last one was Sufacing, a few months ago, and that's a strange and rewarding one.

I do remember that I was sufficiently feminista'd that the grossly sexist pun of the title The Handmaid's Tale never even occurred to me until I heard her chortling about it on NPR. Never much of a fan of PC, was Margaret.

Linus -

I disagree (respectfully, of course) with your "all fundamentalists" correction.

There is an enormous difference between holding radical views about women's roles in society - which all fundamentalists do, you're right, in every religion - and having the will, the organization, and the violence inherent in the society to put it into practice. At this moment in history, that's what the Islamic fundamentalists are doing. They hate us not because of what we have done to them - they hate us because of WHO WE ARE.

I know a lot of sci-fi fanatics who weren't wacky about the book - and I don't think it is her best, although it certainly put her on the map.

Cat's Eye is her real genius. I so agree. I need to read that book again.

Oh, and I definitely read it in that WAVE you mentioned. One of the most refreshing things about Atwood is her defiance of PC fascist lock-step thought. I love that.

She makes no bones about her love of men, her sympathy with men ... etc.

The femi-nazis on my campus didn't get that about her.