The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

How I Found:  This is a reread.  This is one I wish I had a record of my first reaction to reading twenty years ago.  I imagine myself a teenaged-girl shocked by the reality presented, now a thirty-something stunned not by the reality of the book but of our own.  Although this is still a future as yet unrealized, what creates the reality isn't too far-fetched from our own.  Offred speaks of her compatriots of her past, explaining, "We were revisionists. What we revised was ourselves," and we do: change and change and change but never reflect.
Why You Might Read:  If you're looking for a reality check, "Hey, at least we're not there, yet," this is one that presents frightening possibilities that may help us look in the mirror and not shout for change, but for a look at what has been created and how we might each be complicit as our narrator admits.  The answer to this tale isn't in Offred's retelling, though, but the Historical Notes that reveal what we leave as record is all that's left, and if it doesn't exist in tangle form, it's as good as a forgotten memory about a book once read.  

Tell Me:  Have you read this book?  What did you think?