Tag Archives: The Handmaid’s Tale

June 8, 2017 · 1:00 am

The Handmaid’s Tale: The Other Side


This post includes spoilers for “The Other Side” (Season 1, Episode 7) of The Handmaid’s Tale. It also includes spoilers for the book. As usual, the link on the left has full summaries of all of the episodes that have aired so far. 

One of the things that always bothered me about the original version of The Handmaid’s Tale was that neither Offred nor the audience ever learns what happens to her husband, Luke, in it. She eventually did get some information about the fate of their daughter, but not having that same sense of closure for Luke was troubling.

After this episode, I’m so glad I’ve been avoiding spoilers for this show most of the time. I didn’t know that we were going to learn the fate of Luke, or that he’d get an entire episode dedicated to telling his side of the story after June and their daughter were kidnapped. I’ve been assuming all this time that Luke died during their escape attempt. To see him again was a wonderful surprise.

It turns out that Luke was shot in the stomach by the Guardians a few minutes after June and their child ran into the woods. Hoping to be able to interrogate him, the Guardians called for an ambulance to take him to the hospital. Interspersed between these scenes were flashbacks to when and how Luke and his family decided to try to flee to Canada.

While on the way to the hospital, the ambulance got into an accident that killed everyone in the vehicle except for Luke. Having him escape through pure luck made a lot of sense for his character because Luke’s previous life hadn’t given him any special training at all in stuff like hand-to-hand combat or the use of firearms. He had the average person’s understanding of how these things work, so I really appreciated the fact that the writers didn’t try to change this about him

After Luke escaped, he walked in the direction where his wife and daughter had fled. He found a few personal effects that they’d lost when they were captured, but he still had no idea where they’d gone or what had happened to them. Soon after that, he wandered into an abandoned town and was rescued by a small school bus full of a motley crew of kind strangers who were trying to flee the new regime and who described themselves as “an army brat, two strays, a gay and a nun.”  My favourite scene in this week’s episode was when Luke realized he’s just cussed in front of a nun and apologized for it while they were treating his wounds.

What surprised me the most about “The Other Side” was how much I liked these new characters. So far, we’ve met a lot of folks who have been either openly supportive of Gilead or who are the biggest victims of it. Everyone else’s opinions of it were muted until now.

This episode showed how people who weren’t designated to become Handmaids or high-ranking officers in the new social order responded to the coup and all of the violent things that happened once the Sons of Gilead seized power. If you’re a sensitive viewer, don’t worry. Most of these scenes either happened very quickly or happened after people were killed.

I’m going to be honest with you here, readers. This whole time I’ve been assuming that a fairly high percentage of the people in what was once the United States were either neutral to or actively supportive of most of Gilead’s politics due to what life was like for Offred and the other Handmaids, so it came as a surprise to find out just how much resistance there was to the new government in rural areas.

One of the people from the bus was a former Handmaid who was so traumatized by her experiences in the Red Centre that she no longer spoke. No one even knew her name, and yet the entire group took care of her at the expense of their own safety.

There were other signs of resistance as well. When Luke, June, and Hannah stayed at a temporary safehouse in the middle of the woods on their way to Canada, one of their new neighbours discovered them there. I thought for sure he’d turn them in for a reward, but he kept their secret instead and later tipped them off right before the Guardians swooped down on their cabin.

In a later scene, Luke attempted to run away from the bus people and go find his family. One of his rescuers convinced him to keep moving towards Canada by showing him what happens to anyone who fights back against Gilead. The reason why so many of those small towns were eerily empty now is that they’d been doing things like hiding fertile women and fighting back when the Guardians attempted to separate families.

Gilead’s response to that was to hang every infertile adult from the rafters of the church. You can see a quick glimpse of that scene in the teaser for this episode:

Is it worth it to fight back against terror and injustice if doing so will only get you swiftly killed? I love the fact that this show asks that question but refuses to answer it. Every viewer must come up with their own response to it.

The rest of the journey to Canada was anything but safe. Only Luke and the mute woman made it safely across the border. Once again, I was surprised. I honestly thought that most – if not all – of the people he met were going to become at least semi-regular characters on this series. This is one of the few things I would have liked to see done differently about Luke’s story, although I understand why it was written that way. It matched the earlier scene in the church well. GIlead is not a forgiving place for anyone who steps out of line.

As someone who has lived in Toronto for many years, it was fascinating to see the last few scenes take place in my city. Of course U.S. refugees would pick Toronto as the place to set up Little America while they searched for missing loved ones! Many other countries and cultures have done similar things here. There are many neighbourhoods here where you can honestly feel as tough you’ve stepped into faraway places like Italy, China, India, or Korea.

I also liked seeing how this episode ended.  The note that Offred wrote to Luke in episode 6 was safely delivered. They both know that each other are live. Now we have to wait and see what will happen to them next. Will there be a rescue mission? Will we find out where Hannah is? I’m hoping that both of the answers to those questions are yes.

Previous posts in this series:

5 Things I Want from The Handmaid’s Tale

Introducing Offred’s World

Gender Treachery

Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum

Faithful

A Woman’s Place

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June 1, 2017 · 1:00 am

The Handmaid’s Tale: A Woman’s Place


This post includes spoilers for “A Woman’s Place” (Season 1, Episode 6) of The Handmaid’s Tale. As usual, the link on the left has full summaries of all of the episodes that have aired so far. 

This post is going to be divided into two sections to discuss what went on with Serena Joy and Offred in episode 6. Both of these characters had a lot going on with them this week, so let’s dive in!

Serena Joy

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts about this series, Serena Joy has been an extremely difficult character for me to like. She has brief moments where she is bearable while she’s painting pictures or working in her garden, but the way she’s treated Offred so far has been unconscionable.

They are both women who are trapped in a violent, misogynistic world that values them only for the children they will either bear or be given to raise. No other part of them matters in any way. Up until this point, I’ve been assuming that Serena at least had a good reason to be so callous and cruel.

It was interesting, then, to have so many flashbacks of what Serena’s life was like before Gilead rose to power. We saw many glimpses of a happy, equal marriage between her and the Commander. Their home was filled with sunshine and joy. No one harmed them back then. If there were any skeletons in their closets, we saw no evidence of them at all.

This was a surprise to me because the current marriage between the Commander and Serena exists in name only. There haven’t been any moments of love, intimacy, or tenderness between these characters whatsoever in the present day. They fulfill their religious and social duties, but they might as well be colleagues or roommates when you look at how they speak to and interact with one another.

One of the other things we learned through this week’s flashbacks was that Serena was one of the people who helped to create Gilead. The stuff she wrote and said about gender roles, traditional marriage, and how society as a whole should operate were used as scaffolding for Gilead.

No sooner were her ideas accepted, though, than Serena Joy herself was rejected and sent back home. The men who listened so readily to her in the planning stages of the coup locked her out of the conversation as soon as they got things rolling.

The disappointed and stunned faces Serena made when all of this was playing out clearly showed that she’d been expecting to remain part of the inner circle. I found it hard to sympathize with her once I realized exactly how much work she’d put into creating the society that eventually trapped her.

This was the world she argued was the best possible one over and over again. Did she really expect to be given a pass to keep writing books and giving speeches once she’d helped to recreate such a harsh place? Why did she think she’d be treated any differently or any better than any of the other women in their society? How could she turn her head away from other people’s suffering for so long and then act shocked when her own suffering was quietly brushed under the rug as well?

All of the questions ran through my mind during the banquet that Serena Joy organized for the Mexican ambassador whose visit framed so many of the scenes this week. While the Commander was trying to figure out a way to set up trade with Mexico before Gilead’s economy collapsed, Serena figured out how to seal the deal given the small scraps of power she still possessed.

She did it with their most precious resource: the children the Handmaid’s had provided and created for them. A few dozen healthy, happy children caught everyone’s attention as soon as they were paraded in front of the attendees at a banquet that was thrown for the ambassador, the high-ranking members of Gilead, and any Handmaid who didn’t bear visible scars of the tortures they’ve endured so far.

If Handmaids could give Gilead children, Mexico might just be willing to buy them to bear children for their nation as well. This was one plot twist that I definitely didn’t see coming. It makes me shudder to think about how the Handmaid trade would work and how Gilead would make sure they had enough Handmaids for both personal use and to sell for a profit.

My best guess is that Gilead will begin either dramatically expanding the types of “crimes” that will turn a woman into a Handmaid or raiding nearby villages for freeborn women to capture and sell.

I hope we get more opportunities to explore Serena’s past in future episodes. While I don’t like her at all right now, these glimpses of her previous life have helped me to understand her coldness and lack of empathy a little bit.

Offred

One of the things I disliked about Offred’s character in the book was how passive she was. Yes, she was no doubt horribly traumatized by the things she experienced. In no way am I trying to downplay how that can affect a person’s behaviour, but I always wished that she’d at least occasionally push back against her tormentors.

This week was a rewarding experience for me because of this part of her history. Our Offred is beginning to fight back in bigger ways than she ever has before.

Her first introduction to the Mexican ambassador was as stilted as you might expect. She answered all of the ambassador’s questions about what life was like as a Handmaid with diplomacy and pretty falsehoods. I desperately wanted these characters to meet again so that Offred could tell the truth about the severe sexual, emotional, and physical abuse that she’d experienced repeatedly over the past three years.

This was another point where the plot surprised me: the Mexican ambassador didn’t care about Offred’s suffering at all. Like Serena Joy, she was completely indifferent to other people’s pain. If institutionalized rape and torture was what it took for Mexico to begin having live births again, she was more than willing to sign other people up for that.

I spent so much time feeling confused and horrified by the ambassador’s indifference that it took me a second to realize her assistant didn’t agree with her at all. The message he passed on to Offred in the final scene made my heart skip a beat: Luke was still alive. If Offred wanted to, she could send him a message through the assistant.

Scenes like this make me glad I avoid as many spoilers for this show as I can. I never would have guessed this would happen, so it was wonderful to learn that Luke was safely out of the country at the same moment Offred did.

How did he avoid getting shot to death in the first scene of this series? Was he ever even shot? Who helped him get out of the country? Will they be reunited? What happened to their daughter?

I have so many questions and so few answers at this point. I love the fact that this show is pulling away from the book and forging its own path, though. Next week’s episode can’t come soon enough.

Previous posts in this series:

5 Things I Want from The Handmaid’s Tale

Introducing Offred’s World

Gender Treachery

Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum

Faithful

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May 29, 2017 · 1:00 am

Why I Love to Read Speculative Fiction

Speculative fiction is an umbrella term for everything from science fiction to dystopians, fantasy to horror.

I’ve been thinking a lot about speculative fiction in general since The Handmaid’s Tale began last month. This specific storytelling style has appealed to me for as long as I can remember for several different reasons.

Honesty

Books like 1984, Animal Farm, or Brave New World reveal the ugly sides of the systems, societies, or cultures they’re critiquing without hesitation. Do they offend some people along the way? Yes, without a doubt. It wasn’t necessarily their original goal, but they’re not afraid to ruffle a few feathers while attempting to get their audiences to wrestle with the big issues that authors in this genre often explore.

I love that about these tales. There are times when I’m in the mood for something light and fluffy, but my first literary love will always be tales that rip off the parts of human society that are hidden and reveal everything they’re trying so hard to conceal.

It definitely isn’t easy to write an entertaining story that also challenges people to rethink their assumptions. When an author manages to pull this off, it’s truly magical.

Critical Thinking

One of the things that irritates me the most about many news networks in the United States is how sensationalized they are. All of their repetitive panic over serious and frivolous stories alike dulls the senses and makes it extremely difficult to think critically about what the newscaster is reporting. When everything is an emergency, nothing is an emergency.

I avoided the news as much as possible when I lived in the U.S. Now that I’ve been an expat for a dozen years, I find it overwhelming when I’m back in the States for a visit.

The nice thing about the more serious side of speculative fiction is that a well-timed plot doesn’t leave room for these kinds of diversions. Yes, there are scenes in The Handmaid’s Tale that draw me into deep thought every time I read about or watch them. These scenes not about assuming the worst or blowing things out of proportion in order to snag people’s attention, though.

Everything that was included in that particular book has actually happened at least once in the past. Some of the plot points have been repeated over and over again throughout history as we try and fail yet again to learn our lessons and improve on how previous generations behaved.

Speculative fiction can push readers to sort through the various points of view in their plots, decide which ones make sense, and come up with our own theories about what happened and how we should interpret fictional stories that have something to say about real-world events.

Wonderment 

First of all, isn’t wonderment a fantastic word? It’s the kind of word that I like to gently roll around on my tongue a few times before I bother to share it with anyone else.

All of the genres I mentioned in the first paragraph of this post are full of wonder in their own way. For example, I will never forget how I felt at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone when dozens of invitations to Hogwarts appeared at the Dursleys house after Harry’s uncle destroyed the first few that arrived.

Seeing the Dursleys react so strongly to simple magic makes me grin every time I see it. If only they could have seen the more powerful, playful, and sometimes downright dangerous types of magic that Harry encountered once he started attending Hogwarts!

This sense of wonder stuck with me through all of the Harry Potter books. Even the darkest and saddest scenes in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows still tickled my imagination in small ways. Once wonderment has been introduced into a story, it almost always remains there for good.

Escapism

Yes, I know that some people use this term in a derogatory way. I don’t think of escapist literature as a negative thing at all, though.

There is something to be said for immersing yourself in a completely different world when you need a short break or could use some encouragement.

The first time I read the Lord of the Rings series was shortly after my life had changed in all kinds of stressful ways due to a cross-country move my family made when I was a preteen. I had a lot of  trouble making friends and adjusting to my new school.

I was not a happy kid at that point in my life by any stretch of the imagination, but I found a lot of solace in seeing how Frodo and Sam persevered through even the most impossible circumstances.

We weren’t facing the same obstacles, but we were facing the same fears. If they could push through another day, then I could as well.

How about you? Why do you love speculative fiction? I hope you’ll pop over to Twitter today and tell me all about it!

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May 18, 2017 · 1:00 am

The Handmaid’s Tale: Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum


This post includes spoilers for “Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum” (Season 1, Episode 4) of The Handmaid’s Tale. As usual, the link on the left has full summaries of all of the episodes that have aired so far. 

While this episode included several important world-building moments, it wasn’t as action-filled as the previous episodes have been. The picture on the left is one reminder of just how out of the ordinary “Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum” was, but we’ll talk about that more in a few minutes. Let’s stick with the slower pacing for now.

You see, Offred had spent the last 13 days banished to her room as punishment for not being pregnant. Women in Gilead weren’t allowed to read or write, so she had absolutely nothing to occupy her time during those long days and nights.

It was only after examining every last square inch of her room that Offred noticed the phrase nolite te bastardes carborundorum scratched into the wall in her closet. I loved the way they showed her staring listlessly at this phrase as she tried to figure out who wrote it and what they were trying to communicate with her. She had found out in the first episode that the Commander and his wife had a previous Handmaid, but she didn’t know what happened to her predecessor.

There was an important clue to the first Offred’s fate that was revealed to the audience when Martha discovered our Offred lying on the floor and assumed she was dead. Offred lied and said she had fainted in order to prevent anyone else from finding what she’d found in the closet.

The doctor’s visit our Offred was sent on to make sure she was healthy made my skin crawl.  Not only was the doctor creepy in a sad sort of way when he told Offred that he could try to get her pregnant, the rows of pictures of Commanders and Wives holding healthy babies in the waiting room made me wonder exactly how many Handmaids there were altogether out there. For some reason, I thought there were far fewer of them than all of those happy portraits hinted there could be.

They also made me wonder how many of those babies were genetically the doctor’s offspring. Once again I’m glad that I’m only recommending this series for the 14+ crowd. The failed ceremony scene was even more disturbing this week in light of the doctor’s comment about many of the Commanders being sterile. Assuming this is true of Offred’s Commander, then all of the trauma of those nights happens for no reason at all.

My favourite scene, though, occurred at the end of this episode when Offred decided to take the Commander up on his invitation to play a forbidden game of Scrabble after everyone else in the house had gone to bed. Knowing what his intentions were this time didn’t make their interactions any less strange. She was his property. He wanted her to be happy with the arrangement and with her unorthodox relationship with him. In fact, he couldn’t get an erection this month without the illusion that they had some kind of connection.

The nice thing about Offred realizing this was that she was able to use it to find out that the previous Offred committed suicide and that “nolite te bastardes carborundorum” jokingly translates to “don’t let the bastards grind you down.” It was through pretending to have a connection with the Commander that she was also released from her confinement to her room. His fear of another Handmaid killing herself was stronger than Serena Joy’s desire to keep punishing Offred.

Some of the other reactions to this episode that I’ve read have talked about feeling sorry for the Commander in light of how concerned he was about Offred. Given how much power he holds in this world, I had a lot of trouble feeling that way for him. He was so far up the ranks in Gilead that I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d played a key role in creating this world. No, I haven’t read any spoilers about the future episodes. It is pure speculation on my part, but he struck me as someone who fought for something that only sounded good on paper. Once he actually began to experience the world he helped to create, he seemed to feel some buyer’s remorse.

The thing is, the Commander hasn’t had anything important taken away from him. He still has his name, his identity, his family, and as much freedom as anyone can reasonably expect to have in this world. It will be interesting to see if my opinion of him changes in the future, but for now all of my sympathies lie with the Handmaids and everyone else who lost everything to this system.

I have not decided yet if I have sympathy for Serena Joy (who is pictured on the right). The way she treated Offred was abusive and abysmal in this episode, but I’ve also seen the men in her life treat her terribly, too.

That’s not an excuse for her behaviour, by the way. It’s simply an acknowledgement that all of the women in this society have been dealt a crappy hand.

The fact that she has stubbornly refused to help the other women in her house unless it directly benefitted her in some way makes me dislike her intensely. I also hate the fact that she feels so entitled to stealing and raising someone else’s child.

While I have sympathy for her inability to get pregnant when she so clearly yearns to be a parent, wanting to separate a baby from his or her biological mother when the mother has done nothing wrong and has zero history of harming children is horrific.

This is something I hope will be explored further in the future. There have been multiple examples of this sort of thing happening in recent human history, from the Plazo de Mayo mothers to the Baby Scoop era of the 1940s-1970s.

Overall, this was not my favourite episode of this series so far. It was still very good storytelling, but I’m hoping that next week’s episode will have more action in it for Offred’s sake as well as for ours.

Previous posts in this series:

5 Things I Want from The Handmaid’s Tale

Introducing Offred’s World

Gender Treachery

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May 4, 2017 · 1:00 am

The Handmaid’s Tale: Introducing Offred’s World

This post includes spoilers for “Offred” (Season 1, Episode 1) and “Birth Day” (Season 1, Episode 2 )of The Handmaid’s Tale.

As I mentioned last month, I’ll be blogging my thoughts about this show. New episodes air on iTunes five days after they do on Hulu, so this series will be published about a week after each episode is released unless or until iTunes changes this schedule.

The first link above provides excellent plot summaries, so I’m going to use this post to focus on my analysis and reaction to what has happened to Offred so far.

“Offred” 

The opening scene of the first episode made me blink back tears. June – the woman we now know as Offred who is wearing the white bonnet in the image above-  attempted to escape what was formerly known as the United States with her husband and their young daughter. There was so much emotion packed into that scene: terror; love; hope; fear. I was so pleased with how it was put together. It was the best possible introduction to the characters and the totalitarian regime that had suddenly taken over that country.

What I found most interesting about this episode was how smooth the transitions were between Offred’s attempt to flee the country, the time she spent being brainwashed in the Red Center, and her repetitive but still frightening days as a handmaiden who has just moved onto her second placement.

Every setting was terrifying for a different reason. Watching her scream as her daughter was ripped out of her arms was heartbreaking. I couldn’t help but to wonder if the TV show would mirror what happened in the book when it came to the daughter’s fate. This is one of the biggest questions I carried with me through the first two episodes. I really hope it is at least somewhat answered in this season, although I won’t say anything else about it until I know where this storyline leads.

What stuck out to me the most about the Red Center was how effective The Aunts were at forcing the handmaidens to obey. Let me put it to you this way:  there are plenty of ways to hurt someone that will in no way affect their chances of getting pregnant in the future. As Offred and the other handmaidens are only prized for their reproductive capabilities, everything else doesn’t matter so much. I am very glad that these scenes weren’t shown to the audience outright. Seeing the characters react to the aftermath of them was more than enough.

The Ceremony was brutal as well. The book described it in much fuzzier terms, but what happened to the handmaidens each week was rape. This had been something that bothered me about the original plot, so I was glad to see it clarified for the small screen.

“Birth Day”

While both of these episodes do have independent story arcs, I strongly recommend watching them as closely together as possible because of how well they introduce the audience to the most important parts of this world. Gilead has a beautiful and mostly peaceful facade, but the things that happen behind closed doors in it are sickening.

For example: what do you do with all of the repressed anger that handmaidens carry with them? All of them were and are being abused. They are not allowed to defend themselves or protect themselves from future harm.

The Salvaging itself was shot nicely, but I would have loved to see more character and plot development happening before Offred and the other handmaids were told that the bound man before them had raped a pregnant handmaid and caused her to miscarry her child. The audience knew why they were viciously beating him, but they knew nothing else about what was going on there.

This scene happened much later in the book. It’s the only thing I’d change about the beginning of this show because new fans won’t know why it’s so significant to the plot. I can’t say anything else without possibly giving away spoilers if the show decides to follow the same plot as the original story.

With that being said, “Birth Day” also contained my favourite scene in this series. As I mentioned earlier, June/Offred gave birth to a daughter several years before the Republic of Gilead was formed. At the time, newborns were being diagnosed with serious birth defects at an alarming rate…if they were born alive at all. Out of all of the women giving birth in the hospital ward that day, June was the only person whose baby was perfectly healthy.

The nurse’s response to the birth was a strange one. Was the fact that she said “Praise Be!” a hint that she was a supporter of the religious movement that eventually brought about this dystopia? I doubt June noticed that phrase at the time, but once she was indoctrinated into using it that memory must have haunted her.

I am hoping to see more hints like this in future episodes. It was tantalizing to say the least.

How about you? What did you think of the first two episodes of this series? Are you excited that it’s already been renewed for season 2? Come let me know on Twitter.

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April 24, 2017 · 1:00 am

5 Things I Want from The Handmaid’s Tale

There are only two days left until The Handmaid’s Tale premiers on Hulu.

The word excited doesn’t even begin to cover how I feel about this show.

I know that some of my readers are scrupulously avoiding  spoilers, so I’m going to honour that with today’s post. Everything I’ll be talking about is strictly from what happened the book, and it won’t include plot twists. I also won’t go into any detail about what the previews for this show have or have not shown.

Yes, I am tentatively planning to write about this series in depth once I’ve seen the first few episodes. Consider yourself warned when it comes to me sharing a few spoilers in the future.

With that being said, here are the top five things I’ll be looking for in this show when I finally get to see it.

1. A Clearer Understanding of Exactly How Gilead Was Formed

I am really hoping that Offred, the main character, will tell us more about how The United States was dismantled and why The Republic of Gilead took its place.

The book touched on this briefly, but it left out a lot of details about how everything went down. There were certain parts of the original timeline that never made sense to me. Other sections of it were easier to imagine really happening, so it will be fascinating to see how all of these scenes are woven together in a way that hopefully explains the political and social shifts that I found harder to believe.

2. Terrifying Normalcy

Most dystopian novels take place in dark, dreary settings where people fight over the last scraps of food or spend all of their time attempting to outrun zombies.

The Handmaid’s Tale, on the other hand, takes place in a house on a quiet, sunny street where even very minor crimes like littering are completely unthinkable. The lawns are all perfectly manicured there, and everyone still gets to eat three square meals a day.

This was one of the things that appealed to me the most the first time I read this book. I’m crossing my fingers that the cinematography will capture the strange and unforgettable juxtaposition of the tranquil place she currently lives in and Offred’s traumatic memories of her very recent past.

3. Feminism

The Handmaid’s Tale folded all kinds of commentary on feminism, gender, and sexism into a story that I couldn’t stop reading. I can’t wait to see how this is translated from the written word to a TV show. There were so many moments in the original story that could be expanded to make an even bigger impression on the audience.

As much as I want to talk about this section in great detail, I’d risk slipping into spoiler territory if I do.

If the miniseries explores this the way I hope it will, I will definitely return to this topic in a future post. It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about since I first heard that this series was being developed.

4. False News

“I’m ravenous for news, any kind of news; even if it’s false news, it must mean something.” – The Handmaid’s Tale

Offred lived in a world where any kind of news was hard to come by. It was impossible to tell whether or not it was true even if you’d managed to hear a scrap of information about something or someone you’ve been dying to know more about.

I didn’t think too much about this part of the plot the first time I read the book, but it’s something that really frightened me when I reread it last winter.

Information is a form of power. People are much easier to control if you prevent them from easily learning new things or hearing what’s going on in other parts of Gilead. This is especially true if they are constantly doubting whether or not anything they hear is real.

5.  A Roadmap for Staying Hopeful

Offred had no reason at all to feel hope in her tale.

Everything and everyone she’d ever loved had been ripped away from her. She didn’t know where her loved ones were or what they were doing, and yet she never stopped dreaming of being reunited with them someday.

No matter what happened to her, Offred refused to give up. She pushed through every dark mood and painful memory that came her way even when there was no conceivable way for her to make those days even slightly better.

I deeply admired that about this character, and I can’t wait to see how this part of her personality shines through on the small screen. So much of her personal development happened while she was thinking things she dare not say aloud to anyone. It’s going to be fascinating to watch all of that unfold at the end of this month.

How about you? What are you most looking forward to in this show?

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April 20, 2017 · 1:00 am

Why I Love to Reread Books

Earlier this year I reread The Handmaid’s Tale in preparation for the miniseries based on this story that is coming out next week. Stay tuned! I am planning to blog about that series after I’ve seen it, but today I’ll be talking about rereading books in general.

Over the last few years I’ve also reread:

  • The Earth’s Children series
  • The Anne of Green Gables series
  • The Harry Potter series

Yes, I’ve read these stories so many times that I know every plot twist by heart. I’ve even been known to quote my favourite passages from them to my spouse when he least expects it.

There are a few different reasons why I occasionally like to go back and revisit these tales despite the fact that there are many new books left on my to-read list.

Reason #1: I Already Know I’ll Like the Story. 

Several months ago, I started reading something that I was fully expecting to love. The blurb was amazing, the reviews of it were really good, and I’d spoken to someone else who’d read it and thought it was wonderful.

Imagine how surprised I was when I could barely make it through the first scene. Not only was the main character written in a stereotypical manner, the narrator seemed more interested in describing what her body looked like than why she woke up in a world that had shifted from being completely ordinary to not making any sense at all.

I was disappointed. Rather than getting sucked into the story, I quietly closed the file and went looking for something else to read.

The nice thing about returning to old favourites is that I already know what I think of them. If they have flaws, I’ve already weighed them against the storyline and decided that they aren’t serious enough to destroy my warm feelings about the characters or plot in general.

Most of the books I read are still new to me, but sometimes it is really nice to be guaranteed a satisfying read.

Reason #2: I Don’t Always Identify with the Same Character.

I thought Marilla was a stuffy, old grouch the first dozen times I read Anne of Green Gables. Many of the rules she expected Anne to follow didn’t make sense to me, and I thought she was far too strict with the girl in general. The last time I read it, I was surprised by how much I empathized with her.

I am nowhere near Marilla’s age, but I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to suddenly become the permanent legal guardian of a rambunctious preteen who has never known a stable home life, has limited respect for social conventions, and pushes back against almost every boundary you try to set with her.

At least I have memories from a good childhood and a nephew who is close to Anne’s age. Marilla didn’t have any experience with children at all when she first met Anne, and the bits and pieces of her upbringing we later learn about make it sound strict and dreary. Nobody gave her warmth or affection at that age. All she had ever known was duty and hard farm work, and yet somehow she was expected to look after a young girl who was starving for affection.

All of these details make the strong, loving bond she eventually forges with Anne even more remarkable than I remembered it being.

Reason #3: I Know I’ll Find Something New in Them Every Time

Reading the same book again is like walking down your favourite trail and noticing small differences in the landscape this time. It was nowhere near this beautiful  – and possibly photoshopped?! – but when I was a kid I used to love to walk down short mountain trails and find plants I hadn’t noticed before.

No matter how many times my family had previously walked down those paths, there was always some kind of flower or shrub that I’d missed the last time. Had they not been in season on our last visit, or was I looking elsewhere then?

I don’t know, but last winter I reread my favourite book in the Earth’s Children series,The Valley of Horses. The Clan of the Cave Bear, the first book in that series, was full of difficult – and even traumatic – experiences for Ayla, the main character.

What I enjoy the most about The Valley of Horses is how much time she has to reflect on all of the things she experienced after she was permanently banished from her adoptive tribe. There were periods of loneliness in those years she spent living alone, but all of that solitude did give her the opportunity to heal emotionally from the things that had happened to her.

One of the details of this story that I’d begun to forget was that Ayla survived pneumonia while she was living on her own. As someone who has had this disease before, I’m amazed at how well she did at looking after herself while she recovered.

Even the mildest form of pneumonia is a nasty illness. It sucks every ounce of energy out of your body no matter how many hours of the day you sleep, and the symptoms can last for weeks if you happen to be a character living in a time and place where antibiotics won’t exist for another 30,000 years or so. Something as simple as taking a bath or staying awake for more than a few hours at once is extremely difficult even if you’re lucky enough to have a prescription for antibiotics, a warm, safe house, and a fridge full of nutritious food that can be reheated easily.

I can’t imagine having to prepare and cook food, gather wood, keep a fire going, melt snow or ice for water, stay alert for any hint of danger that might be approaching your cave, and try to recover from this horrible disease all at the same time.

It’s something I’d overlooked in the past, but it makes me like Ayla even more now that I’m aware of what that experience must have been like for her.

How about you? How do you feel about rereading books? I’ll be on Twitter throughout the day, and I’d love to discuss it with you.

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March 30, 2017 · 1:00 am

How to Convince Someone to Try Something You Love

One of the first things my spouse introduced me to after we moved in together was the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I don’t remember exactly what he said about it when he mentioned wanting to watch it with me, but I do remember his excitement. He was sure I was going to love that series as much as he did. (Spoiler alert: he was right!)

Last year I felt that same surge of excitement when I heard that one of my favourite books of all time, The Handmaid’s Tale, was going to be turned into a series. While my husband read that story years ago, I wasn’t entirely sure if he was planning to watch it with me when I first brought up the idea. I grinned as soon as he said he was willing to give it a try.

If there’s a book, album, song, TV show, or movie you’ve been wanting to share with someone, keep these tips in mind when you’re explaining to them why you think they’d love it as much as you do.

Clearly Explain Why You Love It

My spouse told me that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was science fiction, horror, satire, comedy, romance, and drama all rolled into one. He gave examples of these elements of the plot that were as specific as they could be without giving away any spoilers.

I was immediately intrigued. Stories often jump between two or even three genres, but I’d never heard of one that tried to be so many different things at once. It was even more interesting to think that this had been a success!

The fact that he could so clearly explain how all of those genres came to be fused into one single tale made me want to give it a try.

Be Honest About Its Faults

Every time I recommend Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series to someone, I make sure to note that the storytelling changes a lot from the first book to the last one. I have a strong preference for the writing style of the first few books, and I’m not afraid to tell people that.

This doesn’t mean I’m any less a fan of her work. There are other stories that I enjoy even though they presented certain groups in stereotypical ways or were a little problematic in general. You can love something and still see things in it that you really wish had been told in a different way for any number of reasons.

If someone can admit that their favourite piece of pop culture isn’t perfect, it makes me more willing to give that book or show a try. There’s a fine line between being excited about something and overlooking any flaws it may have.

Pick the Best Part (or Explain Why You Can’t)

My favourite singers have certain songs that I would immediately start playing if someone asked me why I enjoyed their music so much. In some cases, this would mean jumping back and forth by years or even decades in their catalogue.

There’s always time to go back and fill in the gaps later if the other person happens to like my suggestion and it’s something that can be listened to or watched in any order without messing up the flow of the storytelling

This isn’t possible in some cases, of course. A TV show that builds complex and interrelated storylines over time might not make sense if you jump into the middle of season 4. Sometimes you really do have to start at the beginning. Buffy’s first season wasn’t the best part of that show, but it still needs to be watched in order to understand what happens later and why certain things were foreshadowed early on.

Be Prepared to Accept No for an Answer

Not everyone will become a fan of the new things they try. For example, I watched several Doctor Who episodes before deciding that it’s not my cup of tea and I won’t be watching it again. There were a few specific scenes that I enjoyed, but the storylines in general simply don’t appeal to me.

One of the things I admire in a person is the ability to accept that not everyone will love the same things they do. People’s preferences are complicated. Sometimes those preferences can shift over time, but in other cases someone is never going to love that thing that you can’t get enough of.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Recommending Stuff is a Two-Way Street

There’s something fascinating about getting to know someone by paying close attention to what they do and don’t like. As much as I want to recommend The Handmaid’s Tale to everyone I meet, someone who doesn’t like speculative or dystopian fiction wouldn’t be a good match for this tale.

I appreciate it when others give me this same level of attention. Over the years I’ve tried all kinds of things that I wouldn’t normally read, listen to, or watch. Sometimes I end up enjoying them, and sometimes I don’t. I especially like trading ideas with people who take my suggestions seriously as well.

Recommending stuff is like dancing with someone. There’s a natural pattern of give and take to it that works beautifully if everyone involved understands the rhythm.

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