This book should be read alongside Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Attwood paints a picture of a repressive born-again Christian society emerging from the ruins of the old USA after a sketchily-described series of catastrophes. Attwood's Gilead appears to be set up for one Strawman sort of purpose - to describe how unspeakably awful and shitty life would become for women, once the far-right Christians get their own way and set up a dominion. You get that,but you also get that Gilead would not be a barrel of laughs for anybody, save for the religious maniacs and the manipulative cynics who end up at the top of the heap once Dominion is achieved.
Attwood doesn't go into too much detail as to how Gilead is born. ''Victoria" does. While the underlying politics and religion stink as pungently as it does in Attwood's world, this book sets out a plausible and worrying set of scenarios - worth reading at a time when in the real world the Alt-Right is in the ascendency, more and more people are falling for the nonsense, there is a dysfunctional President at the top, like the blackhead on the boil, the right-wing Christian establishment in the USA is complaining of wholly fictitious persecution whilst seeking to deprive eveybody else of civil liberties and insisting God is wrathful with His people... it's almost, gods help us, life imitating Art. Or vice-Versa. This sort of gives a framework to the absolute toxic shite a lot of people believe in right now. and not just in the USA.
ooh, welcome to Gilead!
This book should be read alongside Margaret Attwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Attwood paints a picture of a repressive born-again Christian society emerging from the ruins of the old USA after a sketchily-described series of catastrophes. Attwood's Gilead appears to be set up for one Strawman sort of purpose - to describe how unspeakably awful and shitty life would become for women, once the far-right Christians get their own way and set up a dominion. You get that,but you also get that Gilead would not be a barrel of laughs for anybody, save for the religious maniacs and the manipulative cynics who end up at the top of the heap once Dominion is achieved.
Attwood doesn't go into too much detail as to how Gilead is born. ''Victoria" does. While the underlying politics and religion stink as pungently as it does in Attwood's world, this book sets out a plausible and worrying set of scenarios - worth reading at a time when in the real world the Alt-Right is in the ascendency, more and more people are falling for the nonsense, there is a dysfunctional President at the top, like the blackhead on the boil, the right-wing Christian establishment in the USA is complaining of wholly fictitious persecution whilst seeking to deprive eveybody else of civil liberties and insisting God is wrathful with His people... it's almost, gods help us, life imitating Art. Or vice-Versa. This sort of gives a framework to the absolute toxic shite a lot of people believe in right now. and not just in the USA.