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Clishmaclaver started rereading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and ordered her copy of The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. The latter has been on my TBR list while the former is one of several books – including George Orwell’s 1984 – that have witnessed a resurgence in sales since the start of 2017.
So, yeah, there’s a definite American/Canadian feel to this weekend’s reading and book recs! 😉
Interested? Check out this article from The Guardian – Margaret Atwood: the road to Ustopia. “The author of The Handmaid’s Tale has been criticised for not wanting to call her books science fiction. But what is SF anyway, and how does it connect with her lifelong fascination with creating other worlds?”
Angie Thomas: the debut novelist who turned racism and police violence into a bestseller. “Angie Thomas grew up witnessing drug dealing and gun crime but dreamed of being a writer. Then police shot a young, unarmed black man and she found her subject.” – The Guardian.
This new teen read really is a publishing revelation. As The Guardian says, Thomas, “a 29-year-old woman from Jackson [has] written a novel that is a strident and utterly compelling march into the most sensitive and contentious subjects in America today: race, privilege and the killings of unarmed black people at the hands of the police. And she has done so for the young adult fiction scene – the popular “YA” genre still best known for Harry Potter and the Twilight trilogy…”
A future Brechin High School Book of the Month? 🙂
Art credit: Illustrations for ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ ©Anna and Elena Balbusso / Cover art for ‘The Hate U Give’ ©Walker Books, 2017
