Back Cover "We shall find ourselves face to face with the commanders. Our function is reproduction. [...] Nothing we must win, no discretion is allowed to flourish secret desires. "In the future may be close in places that seem familiar, the Order has been restored. The state with the support of his militia angels black applied to the letter the precepts of a Gospel revisited. In this society governed by the oppression under the guise of protecting women, motherhood is restricted to the caste of Servants, dressed all in red. One day she tells her pain, anguish and submission. His only refuge, it is the memories of a past life, a time when it was free, she still had a name. A work of great strength, which is in turn pamphlet against fanaticism, advocating the rights of women and praise of present happiness.
I suffered, I have the delay in the launch of my book review of the month, but I'm satisfied. I get the impression this new critical fulfill my role as editor on a literary blog. For if the highest goal of course is to bring to the attention of potential readers an unknown gem, sweet promise of hours of pleasure, it is probably also important to deter those readers reading useless. Especially when the book in question has a pretty good reputation. And I can sleep and you already say that reading this post will save you many hours of boredom.
I want to rename The Handmaid's Tale: Lamentations of spawning red . At least the title, but for content, would look good. For it is indeed this: lamentations monotone and pseudo-philosophical qu'Atwood has the bad taste of pressing on a background vaguely SF without any inventiveness or thickness. Nothing in this book is original: the context of the new order is dictatorial and dystopian siphoned about 1984 Orwell , depth and less, the pace of the narrative and cataleptic exceptional adventures are as much in suspense as Madame Bovary an evening of great fatigue from the topics addressed freedom of women to sexual desire through love as the foundation of life are generally outdated / stupid / poorly treated / clumsy (not to mention unnecessary scratching) is finally writing falsely sought, what does not suit a translation that can be guessed very literal and lacking clear style as lightness. Certainly
1984 raises the bar in the genre. But 1984 was written in 1948 and updated with beautiful variations on the same theme have been proposed, such as the excellent V for Vendetta by Alan Moore (written three years after The Handmaid's Tale). Margaret Atwood's book clearly does not in this category. The fault, in my humble opinion, the prevailing desire of the author to deal with ideas (the condition of women, reproductive goal in itself, femininity ...) rather than telling a story, a desire that the has perhaps facilitated, encouraged to plant a fake backdrop and no thickness to develop (long) about it rather than to develop its characters in a real company on which it would actually make the effort to document (unfortunately it is not difficult to find today societies where the woman is regarded as little more than a useful item to have).
To read or not?
No. I read this book on the advice of a friend who was incensed after he discovered in the original. I readily accept the fact that the translation makes very average yet the book down a notch to the void. But I refuse to believe that what bothered me for about 15 days can suddenly become exciting fluent in English. Or rather, I am sure otherwise.
I can not resist to conclude a wonderful quote abyss into which the book would seem ideal to play as a back cover. Although I fear that the publisher does not subscribe to my proposal.
"How horrible we said, and it was horrible, but it was awful without being believable. It was too melodramatic, it was a dimension that was not part of our lives. "
0 comments:
Post a Comment