Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I read this book in 2012. I remember because I couldn't finish it in a week and I usually finish books that I like in a day -- two days tops. So... I do not like this book. "Like"... what an ambiguous word... a word that usually links a reader's internal reality with the reality of the book he or she is reading. If the realities are the same, then the book is "liked"; if not, then boo.... "Like" does not come close to define or describe this book. It is as if someone asks you to define an apple and you answer him that a pear is red. The book is pessimistic, pragmatic, cynical... it does not deal with the stereotyped fluff of a heroine triumphing over odds. It showcases the very brutal fact of a woman's life when her rights are taken from her by a dystopian regime hell-bent on enacting their version of a fundamental theofascistic utopia... and in doing so, Atwood reveals to the reader how tenuous all civil rights, particularly women's right, are when there are people harking back to some nostalgic past where everyone knew what was moral, and everyone was close to God, where men and men and women were women... So in effect, harking back to a past that never really existed, creating in the process a brutal present of enslavement where the very narrative used by the civil right movements is corrupted to suit the regime's own ends... and to obfuscate the horror being done by them by describing their brutal action as necessity or morality in the face of some imagined depravity. So again I ask... did I "like" the book? Duly note that I am asking this question in reaction to some of the low star rating I've been reading on amazon whose gist of their commentary is that the book is too "unlikable", too "depressing" and too sad. The horror! The horror! No, I did not like the book. The book is not Harry Potter or Percy Jackson -- and for those readers who actually rated their book by how much it had "depressed them" or made them feel "pessimistic", perhaps you should just read Harry Potter and forget about the Handmaid's Tale. Now let me try again in describing this book while deleting the word "like" from my vocabulary. Does the book make you think? yes. Is the book gripping? yes. Does the book captivate you and engage your emotion? yes. Does the book make you realize some facts about life you'd rather not think about? yes. Does the book break the quintessential stereotyped novel and provokes you while doing so? yes. Yes, yes, yes. I did not like this book. I did not read this book to consume it as if it was my favorite jumbo pizza with two toppings of cheese... nor should you. So please don't lower this book's rating because the heroine did not win in the end or find her man or whatever... That the book was able to engage you, to make you think... that the "meandering" musing of Offred, which you did not like, found their way insidiously into your own mind and changed, if just a little bit, how you see the world, then the book is deserving of the highest honors. Otherwise.... ...... ..... ...... go read Harry Potter again.