Atwood’s sheer assurance as a storyteller makes for a fast, immersive narrative that’s as propulsive as it is melodramatic. It’s a contrived and heavily stage-managed premise-but contrived in a Dickensian sort of way with coincidences that reverberate with philosophical significance. Shrewdly, instead of weakening The Handmaid’s Tale’s assured status as a horror-paradigm of ideological tyranny by stretching out its fearfulness, Atwood has complemented her menacing masterpiece with a mordantly entertaining look at the monstrosities of Gilead on the brink of its dis-integration. The twists and turns of an extravagantly suspenseful final race for freedom are done with bravura relish. What sweeps the book along, though, is its imaginative exuberance. And Atwood has to detour into spoof gothic and semi-burlesque thriller to evade later risks of jarring discrepancy between suavely ironic tone and uncomfortable content. A back story describing how Lydia was broken down into seeming submission to the regime contains material bleak even for black comedy. The transition from grim to grin isn’t without some bumpiness. Both accounts teem with lively detail and, though differing in their perspectives on the Republic, share an appealing youthful ingenuousness.
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