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Review of new edition audiobook, narrated by Elisabeth Moss.

This is my second reading of The Handmaid's Tale, the first being around twenty years ago. The book still resonates as relevant and chilling. What I got mostly from listening to this audio version, though, is a better appreciation of the poetic and dissociative way Offred recounts her experiences in Gilead, both in her present and past. Atwood shows her brilliance as a writer in her ability to tell a tale in this piecemeal and non-linear fashion that somehow also remains tightly focused and never gets away from her. Elisabeth Moss gives an unparalleled performance in her reading, as close to becoming the character and speaking in her voice as one could possibly ask for.

We may call Eurydice forth from the world of the dead, but we cannot make her answer; and when we turn to look at her we glimpse her only for a moment, before she slips from our grasp and flees. As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.

Highly recommended.