So. As per nossy's lovely suggestion MANY moons ago, here is a bit of a round up of some of my irl (gasp) book club discussion wotsits. Beware of SPOILERS I suppose?

I actually read the book a long time ago and have been dithering and failing to write anything about it for fear of not doing it justice. I can hardly remember it now and have used wikipedia to refresh my memory a bit, so clearly doing it this way cannot fail to be a success. Yes, that was a ridiculous sentence. I was tidying today you see, and found an old receipt with scribbled notes of book club discussion that I'm almost entirely sure refers to this book.

On we go!

So. I really liked the book. I hadn't heard of it before one of my fellow book clubbers (that sounds a lot more violent than it is in reality) suggested it. From the title I did not expect anything along the lines of a dystopian future, but clearly that is what I got, and I was pleased and mildly freaked out. A heady combination.

Having studied (well, I read it) Nineteen Eighty-Four at school, I couldn't help but make comparisons with the constant war against an unknown or not talked about enemy. I think I found The Handmaid's Tale more creepy because I could relate to it more if that's the right way of putting it. Suddenly not having access to money because it's all magic numbers on a computer is very easy to imagine happening.

One thing we found a little strange about it all though was just how fast everything seemed to change. I suppose things can't help but be changed so dramatically when nuclear bombs or whatever it was have gone off but changing completely how your life is conducted on a day to day basis...well I'd like to think there'd be more resistance. Although as the ending implies it didn't last a huge amount of time, so perhaps it's not that the resistance was lacking, more that it took a while to get going.

Another thing which seemed a bit odd was how fussy they were about what kind of women could be allowed to breed, and how it was achieved, given that fertility and birth rates were so reduced. A logical approach to that kind of situation is probably not appropriate though given everything that was going on.

The tourists were a bit odd too - that such an environment could exist when the rest of the world (or just parts? can't remember) were getting on as normally as they could.

Well, anyway, that's about as much as I can gather from my random notes. Any thoughts? I'm sure I've missed out a lot. I'm going to have to reread it some time.

~z

EDIT: By the way, the next book is It's Your Time You're Wasting by Frank Chalk if anyone wants to read along at home