I loved the way Atwood tells this story, as a diary with no clear end. I was worried about overlong scenes of horrible abuse. But the book spends more time on how the protagonist gets through each day (we never learn her name), and juxtaposing the barbaric state with glimmers of hope and beauty.

This story is all the more grotesque and frightening because it has so many facets and traces of actual history. While extreme and unthinkable (obviously not), so is much of mankind’s documented history. A Handmaid’s Tale is a thought provoking, cautionary tale built upon mankind’s history of inhumanity toward those it perceives as weaker (women in this case).

Great book.

We should learn some things from this book