While the narrative is honest and introspective given the setting and circumstances, it can be difficult to impose one's willful suspension of disbelief on the story that presents such an extreme social shift — one that comes across as hundreds of years in the making — in less than a decade. It's also difficult because Atwood's speculation doesn't follow her Reagan-era inspiration to its logical conclusion, but rather to one that warps evangelicalism to such an extreme of its extreme that the idealistic utopian regime she does create feels forced and farcical. It's only when you pretend the protagonist Offred is born into this fanatical imagining, rather than part of the generation that allowed it, that it feels like it could fit.

So, it's not so much that her speculation of an oppressive, totalitarian, religious government can't happen in America. It's that it seems desperately unlikely in the manner she describes, in the speed in which it happens, and in the abruptness of the change. If not for her captivating delivery as a writer, it is quite likely its bleakness would have one been boorish in someone else's hands.