This is my 3rd Atwood book and one of the things I enjoy about her writing is that she plays with the narrative - Alias Grace draws on a real-life crime and always keeps that bit of mystery, The Blind Assassin weaves three story connected story lines and The Handmaid's Tale is told as a transcribed "journal" of sorts. The dystopian story follows a Handmaid - young woman who is essentially used as a womb by a couple who cannot have a child on their own - as she tries to follow the rules in an oppressive society. For much of the book, the tale is told in sort of a series of vignettes that loosely flow together, but the "Historical Notes" at the end clarify that the story is actually transcribed from tapes found many years later and are assumed to be produced by this woman after she escaped from oppression. This helps to explain some of the slightly disjointed and disconnected feeling of the narrative. I also like that Atwood doesn't feel the need to wrap everything up in a bow - the reader to able to continue some aspects of her stories to evolve beyond the pages. 
 **Potential Spoilers** 
 What I liked about this story was the perspective of the woman we follow - the only name we are given in Offred, which I don't really want to call her because it denotes her "ownership" by a Commander named Fred. She feels real to me in that she is nuanced and her emotions/actions are believable. It's been about 3 years since she was torn from her lover/"husband" (Luke) and child, and she is trying to figure out how to survive. She isn't part of the "resistance" nor is she a "believer" in the new society - she is in limbo. She has learned that those with the power can be cruel, so she is afraid for herself, Luke and her child; though she does not know what happened to Luke and she learns that her child has been placed with other parents. 
 What struck me was that I could see myself behaving this way - trying to understand what was going on and who to trust, while trying not to rock the boat. Much as I would like to see myself fighting the good fight (and hopefully I would do that), I am also a cautious person by nature. There is a quiet strength in this woman, as she figures out her next steps. That said, I find some of her decisions questionable, particularly having a somewhat dangerous affair with the Commander's chauffeur - it ends up being a good decision on her part (for more than just decent sex!) but it could have been disasterous. My immediate response was "please let this not fall into the trap of man/love will make everything OK", which is where it seemed to be headed. Fortunately, it took a turn before going too far in that direction. 
 The story draws on the usual dystopia tropes of environmental contamination, fanatical beliefs (in this case fundamentalist beliefs that women should have no rights) and use of symbols and traditions (in this case Christianity) to promote the message. The subjugation of women is a major theme in this book, through the removal of independent means and (for the Handmaids) forced sex for the purposes of procreation. The downside of using these tropes is that I didn't have the sense of something new. The scenario described was terrible and I (particularly as a woman) certainly would not want to live through this. The story's limitations was saved in some sense by having a narrator who didn't know much beyond her own experiences. Unlike 1984 and Brave New World, I didn't feel like I had a sense of the broader societal structure. However, because I felt connected to the character, the story was interesting. 
 In some ways, this book reminded me of It Can't Happen Here in the sense that this seemed to happen almost overnight and with little resistance or opposition. This seems implausible to me, so in both stories, I just accept the hand-waving around how it was done and suspend disbelief. Written during the Reagan era, there are some obvious references to some very '80s things, which somewhat took me out of the story.