Novels about a bleak and sorry future are quite common. . . and Margaret Atwood has written a number of them, but this book is different. It is not about the inconceivable future, the maybe future, or even the remote future. The setting is so very real and present. Every day I read, hear, or see something that is (not could be, but IS) the root of some element of the disturbing and horrific future of this story. Like Arthur Clarke's Childhood's End, Atwood presents the end of humanity as we know ourselves to be. But unlike Clarke, this vision is bleak, wrought from the mind of a single individual embedded deep in the power structures of corporate life . . . in a way that is too possible, too evident.
I couldn't put the book down and I can't forget it. Only once before have I been so haunted by a book. As disturbed as I am by it, I would not trade away the insight Atwood offers into the nature of humanity under advanced capitalism and the symptoms of a dying empire.
Five stars and then some for this book, but beware, you'll look at the world around you in a wholly different way.
Posted by Sam Noir and Sarah Dennison
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