Oh wow. What a shocking, compelling, absolutely haunting novel. 
 I've never read anything like this before, or even this genre. 
 My year eleven English teacher recommended this to me as extra reading for a part of the course entitled "Future Worlds". I'm so glad she did. This is one of those books that stays with you long after it has ended. I've thought of little else all morning. 
 Just the idea, that such a thing could happen! With so little resistance from the people, they all just let it happen. It's really just haunting. 
 The writing was amazing; I felt the boredom and futility just as Offred described it. I would love to know what happened to her, in the end. Whether she was killed, or sent to the Colonies, whether she escaped and survived, or whether she was recaptured. So many questions! The book itself posed a lot of questions the whole way through. Some were answered in the story itself, revealed slowly, others in the epilogue; some we are left to ponder and draw our own conclusions. 
 One thing is for sure, I will be pondering awhile!