A re-read

I have just finished reading Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, probably about 30 years after I first read it. I read it this time as part of a sort of challenge I have set myself to read/re-read books I read a long time ago or ones I have always meant to read. I had to buy a new copy of this, as my old copy has disappeared somewhere. And I was surprised by the cover, but then realised it was from the TV version that was on recently. I did not see it. 

The book made a huge impression on me when I first read it, so much so that I did not want to see the TV version. And now I am glad I did not see it and was able to keep my own images and thoughts about it. It can be a problem - watching the film or TV version of a book that has had a big impact on you. 

It is an astonishing book. It always was but, with what has gone on since it was first published, it is even more astonishing. The idea that anything can happen, can happen very quickly and can change everything, is something we know all too well. In this version of the book, Margaret Atwood writes an introduction in which she states, and provides evidence for, that she put no event in the book that had not already happened somewhere, sometime. A very scary thought.