book club

ok, so...today i took the time to google the book in question, and actually read an interview with the author (margaret atwood/a handmaid's tale) on line.....and so it seems i was ahead of the game for the person who suggested the book/hosted the gathering had not done these things......go figure.....what was most chilling about what atwood had to say was that there was nothing in that book that had not happened before......it was not 'futuristic'.....by any stretch of the imagination...she focused on the puritans in mass...where her novel takes place.....and reminded us that these folks did not come the new world to make a democracy...they wanted a totalitarian govt....with one supreme person in charge, basing rules loosely on the bible.....and with women taking a back seat......we think of these folks in golden-toned images......when they were quite brutal in their dishing out of punishment......keep in mind that they burned or drowned women who were different under the guise of convicting them of witchcraft......but i digress from the book.....i especially liked the part where the narrator retells a scene 3 different ways...and explains each time that she may be making it up....her memory has become so confused with the pain of reality that she cannot keep fact from the fiction she creates to keep herself sane......this was one of the few books where i will admit to thinking about just what it would take for me to commit suicide...as some of the book's women use as their ticket out......so very tragic.....we welcomed a new member.....the spouse of a local psychiatrist who chose to keep his own name.....again...go figure......