The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood

A chilling tale of totalitarian government. The US has become a religious military state in where a majority of the women are used purely for reproductive purposes. Margaret Atwood excellently portrays the mental effects of being in a government of that kind where the controlled are slowly indoctrinated. You see the main character, June, fight to stay present and to stay herself with so much being chipped away. She is reluctant to retreat inwards, which many of her fellow Handmaids have done but being present is also intolerable. The story is told as her narrating the story in the present tense to a fictional person, the reader. This style of writing creates a unique unreliable narrator because often June does not tell her own story to herself accurately. For reasons such as it being intolerable and that she’s often ashamed of the actions shes done in order to survive. This survivors guilt is a recurring theme throughout the book.