Aussi effrayant?

Je n'ai lu que cet été "The Handmaid's Tale" de Margaret Atwood et l'ai trouvé si redoutable que je me félicitais de ne pas l'avoir découvert à sa sortie en 1985.

Bien peu de thé, et pas du meilleur.

The Bible is kept locked up, the way people once kept tea locked up, so the servants wouldn't steal it.

[ ...]

Probably Serena Joy has been here before, to this house, for tea. Probably Ofwarren, formerly that whiny bitch Janine, was paraded out in front of her, her and the other Wives, (p.132) so they could see her belly, feel it perhaps, and congratulate the Wife.
...
Would you like a cookie, dear?
...
And any day now, oh, you must be so excited, she's big as a house, I bet you can hardly wait.

More tea? Modestly changing the subject. 

[...]

 How would she have found out about Janine? The Marthas? Janine's shopping partner? Listening at closed doors, to the Wives over their tea and wine, spinning their webs.

[...]

You'll have to forgive me. I'm a refugee from the past, and like other refugees I go over the customs and habits of being I've left or been forced to leave behind me, and it all seems just as quaint, from here, and I am just as obsessive about it. Like a White Russian drinking tea in Paris, marooned in the twentieth century I wander back, try to regain some distant pathways; I become too maudlin, lose myself. Weep. Weeping is what it is, not crying. I sit in this chair and ooze like a sponge.

[...]

I've heard this speech, or one like it, often enough before: the same platitudes, the same slogans, the same phrases: the torch of the future, the cradle of the race, the task before us. It's hard to believe there will not be polite clapping after this speech, and tea and cookies served on the lawn. 

À tel point qu'une recherche associant son nom avec tea a fini par fournir ce souvenir de ses années d'université:

" I would like to horrify your readers by saying that when I was in Harvard graduate school we did a two-hour seminar: at the one hour mark, the girls would make tea and cookies and serve them to the boys.

Did you do it?
Margaret Atwood: Of course.     http://www.herizons.ca/node/180 >

Je ne peux pas me permettre d'attendre 35 ans avant de lire la suite, parue récemment, et profite donc de l'offre de BBC d'écouter en ligne The Testaments  d'ici le 30 octobre. 

costume pour l'Hallowe'en?