The Handmaid's Tale

I just finished reading Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and I really liked it. It kept me up reading too late every night until I finished it, which is high praise. It's dystopian literature, like Brave New World, We and of course 1984, which I like anyway, but this was especially well done. I thought Atwood masterfully portrayed the "macro" level society at the same time that she portrayed the handmaid's personal narrative within it.

I also couldn't help but notice some similarities to The World Since 9/11(tm):

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.

I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

... Things continued in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored, and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.

Okay, nobody's machine-gunned the government, but the theme Atwood creates of everyone going along with less and less freedom and more and more craziness "for their own good," painted on a backdrop of religious fundamentalism, was still a little extra creepy. A great book that I highly recommend. It's been around long enough, and used in enough college courses, that if there's a used bookstore anywhere near you, or a computer that can connect to half.com, you should be able to pick up a copy cheap.