Handmaid's Tale or Children of Men

I finished The Handmaid's Tale today. I didn't like the ending. I hate being left in mid air. How they will make a second series of the tv programme when most of the book has already been covered beats me.

I don't think we do know that Offred got out. The narrative of the book ends in the same way as the TV series, with her being taken away in the black van and quoting from the book that she doesn't know what's in store but whatever it is 'can't be helped'. The professor speaking in the final chapter gives a couple of possibilities – that Offred made her tapes within the borders of Gilead and they were smuggled out, either by her or by someone else, or that she escaped and made them elsewhere, and also that they could be forgeries made years later, though he regards that as unlikely because of the technology she used.

It's interesting that the academic symposium, that Margaret Atwood is clearly sending up, is just like it would be today, though set 150 years after Gilead. So we may study earlier societies but we learn nothing from them, I suppose is the message.