I am half-way through and find it so far, a compelling read. However the child and teenage voices are often weak and grating in my view, because there are points where the voice and comment is clearly meant to be of a child or teenager at the time, but it is too adult. That is where the device of trying to write a child's memories in a supposed present tense but actually as an adult remembering falls down. It erodes the sense of what DOES sound authentically childlike or teenage-like and so a reader cannot 'live' their past with them which one needs to, at least consistently if not constantly. The earliest example of this is actually near the beginning, page 20, where Agnes, still only '8 or 9', appears to acknowledge the power of men and women's lack of it when she says ..."it was becoming clear to me that, despite the urges Aunt Vidala said I aroused in them, I had no power over them otherwise.". ...' the urges Aunt Vidala said I aroused in them' could be a child, whereas 'despite', ' it was becoming clear to me' and...'I had no power over them otherwise' is an adult tone, perspective and sensibility, so not even believable from a child brought up in Gilead . Therein lies the problem of writing children's and teenagers' memories as if they are immediate, complete with descriptions of people, places and conversations in great detail and depth as if they are happening when one knows they are written in the future by those people now grown up. Either choose to write it first person present until the adult takes over near the end or all from adult memory. Though I am enjoying the read, I struggle to equate it with Booker Prize material but what do I, an ordinary reader know?! In terms of complicity, and what forces people to be or become so, Serena's early testament would have made a book in itself; interesting if painful reading, especially when related to what some women's lives are like even as I type. Hey, but I'm being picky, and maybe Ms. Atwood will yet write another volume!