Denver Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club

Whatever problems I may have with Atwood's writing style, I certainly have to give her credit for a powerful premise. Her future society is dismal as can be, yet disturbingly believable.  I think the society is believable in part because Atwood gives a plausible mechanism for the creation of such a sexist society, the pressures resulting from rampant infertility (although I wish Atwood had dealt with this more in the text and dropped the lame "historical notes").  It also helps that most of the atrocities occur offstage - as in the present day, the worst aspects of society are hidden from view.  I appreciated that everyone has it bad in Atwood's future world, not just the handmaids or even just the women.  The implications of the setting of The Handmaid's Tale were interesting enough to carry me through what struck me as tedious, self-indulgent prose.  I found Atwood's constant attempts to be clever (sometimes successfully), rather than simply to tell a story, annoying and oppressive.  This is sadly typical of a respected mainstream writer.  In the field of "literary" mainstream fiction, it seems to be considered passé to actually try to tell an engaging story.  Another reason why the quality of writing within the SF genre is often much higher, in my humble and deeply biased opinion, than in anything to be found among the shelves of respectable novels.