Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is one of the most frightening books that I have ever read, and it manages to horrify without a single grotesque space alien leaping out of anyone's intestines or the graphic description of serial murders.
Instead it horrifies because Atwood shows us how easily society can consume itself and how in times of social disease groups that have historically had less power can find themselves with no power at all. Her book frightens not because she gives form to the unimaginable, but because they simply tweaks the world that we already live in to allow us to see how truly terrible it was all along.
The Handmaid's Tale is told through the viewpoint of an anonymous woman living in some oppressive society of the near future as essentially a slave whose sole function is to bear children for the underpopulated theocracy called the Republic of Gilead that was once the United States.
The narrative does not even have a name. She is a cipher called Offred, presumably because the Commander of the household in which she is the only fertile member has the given name of Frederick. (This surrendering of her name to the male of the household is, of course, not so very different from the tradition that most women follow of taking their husband's last name when they marry.)
There would be no tale at all if this handmaid were the compliant procreator that she is supposed to be. But she is in fact an incompletely successful product of the Rachel and Leah Re-education Center, literally named for the passage in Genesis where Rachel tells Jacob, ôBehold my maid Bilhah, go in unto her; and she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her.ö
One of the most disturbing aspects of the book is that it is clear that in some ways Offred enjoys her oppression, lending the novel an arresting ambiguity. Offred knows better, understands the psychology of tyranny and feels guilty for submitting....