A Paradigm-Shift Book

Margaret Atwood picked A Tale of Two Cities for a reason, and it isn't comfort. She thinks we are living inside its opening sentence: the best of times, the worst of times, a settled world starting to slide. That's the first surprise of this episode. The second is what she does once the case is made. She reads Charles Dickens the way one builder walks through another's house, testing the joists: the famous opening, the pistol Chekhov says must go off, the timeline she suspects he drew because she draws the same one for her own books. By the end, you'll see the machine. It's a beautiful machine.