This is one of the books that I've never managed to read. I started to leaf through it in the bookstore, but I didn't like the language and I felt it wouldn't pull me in. Which is a shame, because I'd love to read it. I saw the film several times and it always succeeded in pulling me in. I like the depressive hopelessness of the story.

I remember reading somewhere a few years ago, around the time when the right-wing groups in the US began to gain more prominence, that The Handmaid's Tale presented a truly inconceivable dystopian scenario at the time when it was written. But then, suddenly, it no longer was quite so inconceivable - the perception of the female body as sacred vessel, ambulatory chalice has begun to ring true.