A Toronto parent believes Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is unsuitable for high school students and has filed a complaint with the Toronto District School Board. (Daniel Oshoa de Olza/Associated Press)

A Toronto parent has filed a formal complaint with the Toronto District School Board, saying that Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is unsuitable for a high school curriculum.

The Canadian novel's focus on "sex, brutal situations, murder and prostitution," and is not acceptable material to be studied by high school students, Robert Edwards said in his complaint.

The book's foul language, anti-Christian overtones, violence and sexual degradation, he argued, violate the board's policies of respect and tolerance.

First published in 1985, The Handmaid's Tale is set in a futuristic totalitarian society in which women are used as breeders.

It won the Governor General's award in 1985 and was shortlisted for the 1986 Booker Prize.

Edwards, the father of three sons, recently read the book after his 17-year-old son studied it in his Grade 12 English class at Lawrence Park Collegiate.

The school board's policy is that any complaint that can't be solved at the school level goes to a review committee.

The Toronto Star reported that a review committee met Thursday evening and is now reviewing the book. It will make a recommendation to the board's director of education.

Russell Morton Brown, a retired University of Toronto English professor, told the Star that the book probably wasn't written for 17-year-olds, "but neither were a lot of the things we teach in high school, like Shakespeare. And they are all the better for reading them. They are on the verge of adulthood and there is no point in coddling them."