Sheri | A Fictional Interlude

What’s a show you found way too painful to keep watching?

I read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale last weekend and now I suddenly feel compelled to go back and rewatch the show from the beginning. I stopped after a couple of seasons because I simply could not deal. If there’s one storyline guaranteed to destroy me on sight, it’s women separated from their children. Every episode felt like an emotional demolition: anger, desperation, anger, helplessness, anger, determination, and did I mention anger? Because wow. I was unwell.

But now that the book is fresh in my head, I feel like I owe it to Atwood, and honestly to these not quite unprecedented times where women do not have complete body autonomy, to not look away this time. The novel is prophetic and terrifying in how plausible it feels. It’s evident that Atwood didn’t write this dystopia for shock value but rather as a warning rooted in history and human behaviour, and that’s why the adaptation hits so hard. Ignoring warning signs just because they haven’t reached your doorstep has never ended well for anyone.

I’m incredibly grateful to the wonderful team at @mcclellandstewart for sending me this stunning 40th anniversary limited edition of The Handmaid’s Tale, available exclusively at your local indie bookstore, along with a finished copy of Margaret Atwood’s memoir, Book of Lives. Two sides of the same brilliant mind: the warning, and the woman who wrote it.

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