"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood (published 1984)
I could only stand to read the first few pages of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1984) before feeling that slight creeping of an oncoming panic attack spreading throughout my body. I closed the book. The scenes were too incongruous; something too familiar mixed with an extreme injustice: a school gym, familiar with its polished wood floors and basketball nets, made into a sparse bunker for women, beds lined up as in an orphanage or hospital. It was late when I peered into this dystopia and that night I had nightmares. I don’t remember what they were. But I knew that I would read the book in full this year (I had tried four years ago and failed to finish), and I knew that the next time I would open it to read I would, like the main character Offred, have to * steel myself * as she does to continue allowing myself to take in the story. Disclaimer: I haven’t watched the new TV series based off of this book and I don’t intend to. The story is told from the perspec...