2018 School Spending Survey Report
The Handmaid’s Tale
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Atwood’s bestselling novel offers a searing first-person account of a near-future United States where women’s rights and identities have been suppressed out of existence. The story is Offred’s, a woman whose name and personage have been utterly subsumed under the man who owns her and her fertility in a time where fertility is sharply declining. Readers experience her memories of “the before”—the 1970s—as Offred lives her life in the now, tasting tiny moments of rebellion in a world that controls her and erases her at every turn. The 40 years since publication have only made this searing work even more frightening in its portrayal of how easy it was to erase an entire class of people and how fast it became the new normal.
VERDICT This is even more chilling but just as highly recommended in 2025 as it was in 1985, as historical events have made its grim science-fiction seem all too plausible. Readers who love seeing just how bad things can get and are searching for books with similar, terrifying themes will also want to read C.J. Carey’s Widowland, Sherri S. Tepper’s classic The Gate to Women’s Country, and Emily Tesh’s award-winning novel Some Desperate Glory.
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