Review | The Handmaid’s Tale in audiobook is a timely dystopian classic
Margaret Atwood’s brilliant and unforgettable novel of female subjugation is perfectly read by Joanna David
by Margaret Atwood (read by Joanna David)
Random House Audiobooks
First published in 1985, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic depicts a fundamentalist America in which women are chattel and used as reproductive animals. Interest in Atwood’s chilling prophecy has been rekindled thanks to a timely television adaptation. With many commentators alluding to a similarity between Atwood’s Gilead and Trump’s America, this is a propitious moment to download Joanna David’s exquisite audiobook. David is best known for costume dramas, and her cut-glass accent is both perfect and a little disarming: this is New England and not England, after all. Nevertheless, the clarity of her voice matches the cool power of Atwood’s prose in describing the sterile horrors of Gilead’s self-proclaimed moral guardians. Brilliant and unforgettable.
