Ohmigosh, I had NO IDEA there was a Handmaid's Tale Discussion thread!
When I was in yr 9/10, the teachers decided to trial letting students pick 2 books of the same genre and I chose dystopian beacuse I adore dystopian books (Read all the..The Selection, Animal Farm, The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Giver, Uglies, Ready Player One, Matched, Delirium, and like a tonne more!!).
Sooo, my dad had recently bought me 1984 so I was so excited to choose that, and I'd heard of The Handmaid's Tale so I picked it.
Honestly, I knew absolutely nothing about it and the only reason I chose it is because I'd read that Emma Watson had been hiding copies of the book around Paris and poor oblivious little me thought that sounded nice so yeah, I chose that!
Woah. It was absolutely terrifying!! I still get a bit freaked out thinking about it. But, I feel like it's such an important thing that people need to know about!! Kinda come to realise that most dystopian novels end up with something more than a happily ever after (like in the Selection)!
I feel like the grimness of The Handmaid's Tale seeped into my own writing; I had to do a creative response for it and I wrote from the perspective of Offred's daughter (this was before the show actually came out and we knew nothing about her). So if anyone's interested in reading, let me know
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But ahhh, so excited that there's an actual board about it!!