Sometime in high school, when I was 15 or so, I went on vacation in Cape Cod with my best friend and her family. I don't remember if it was February or April, but it was cold. We went to the beach but we didn't swim. Instead, we played The Handmaid's Tale. I was the handmaid. 
 I hadn't read it (my friend had) so I didn't know, at the time, what being cast as 'handmaid' meant. Now, 20 years later, I've read it (in anticipation of the Hulu series I'm now very excited to start) and well, wow. 
 The handmaid is the protagonist. The lead, as it were. But she's subservient to basically everyone and has no status. Even her name, or rather, the only name we're allowed to know or call her, is attached inextricably to the man and household she quite literally belongs to. The handmaid is a non-entity. Powerless. 
 But I'd rather be a handmaid than an Aunt or a Martha or wife. The handmaids are victims and visible. The Handmaid is the heroine. 
 I read the book quickly. I saw myself in more than one character. I highlighted the phrases that hit far too close to current reality. I cared about the narrator. I worried about her. I wondered, a lot, often, what 15 year old me had in common with this titular handmaid? Nothing. Everything. We are brave your highness. 
 The epilogue is fascinating. It presumes the horrible terrible society described in the novel failed. But when I picture the academics presenting their findings regarding the Handmaid and her story I picture old white cis men, the type that populate the Harvard of the narrator's youth. Her story is reconstructed and presented by these men. And their peers laugh. 
 I was 15 and I was cast as a handmaid and I didn't know what it meant and now I do and yet I don't. That's what this book is about.