The Testaments: A Novel (The Handmaid's Tale, #2)

by Margaret Atwood

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE • A modern masterpiece that "reminds us of the power of truth in the face of evil” (People)—and can be read on its own or as a sequel to Margaret Atwood’s classic, The Handmaid’s Tale.  

“Atwood’s powers are on full display” (Los Angeles Times) in this deeply compelling Booker Prize-winning novel, now updated with additional content that explores the historical sources, ideas, and material that inspired Atwood. 
 
More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results.
 
Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third: Aunt Lydia.  Her complex past and uncertain future unfold in surprising and pivotal ways.
 
With The Testaments, Margaret Atwood opens up the innermost workings of Gilead, as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.

• ISBN10: 0525562621
• ISBN13: 9780525562627
• Publish Date: 1 September 2020 (first published 10 September 2019)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Vintage Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 448
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780525562627

Reviews

[Mad Soul Child]

не разделяю негодования, мне понравилось
не знаю то ли это я апгрейднулась, то ли Маргарет стала писать попроще, но читалось гораздо легче, гораздо интереснее, много новых деталей, взгляд с разных сторон, и вообще больше разной движухи. лично у меня это продолжение не вызывает прискорбный вздохов, как после прочтения той же "Скарлет" после "Унесенных ветром". добрая половина Рассказа Служанки была такой душной, что я не знала как решилась дочитать. в этой части благо такой проблемы нет.

[moraa]

Enjoyed the story. Won't be returning to the world of Gilead again though. Some of the stuff was just too triggering for me.

[ktshpd]

Mixed Feelings... Still Processing...

[Charli G.]

If you want to see inflammatory reviews, just go look at the reviews for The Testaments on Goodreads. Several people have panned the book majorly, stating that the book wasn’t necessary. I’m here to tell you that while those people might feel The Handmaid’s Tale was fine as it was, it really wasn’t.

What those illustrious readers and reviewers failed to understand was that The Handmaid’s Tale left off with so many unanswered questions. What happened to Offred in the end? Did she survive? Was she ever reunited with her daughter? How long did Gilead exist after Offred’s story ended? How did Gilead fall? We needed answers. This book provided them.

I was ecstatic to hear this book was coming out. I immediately set out to obtain a copy as soon as it was released, although it took me a few days to get to it. This book was amazing. It answered all the questions I had.

The book is written from the perspective of three people – Agnes Jemima, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia. Anyone who has read The Handmaid’s Tale or even watched the series on Hulu knows who Aunt Lydia is. The other two, perhaps not so much. However, if you catch the clues, you’ll figure out who Agnes Jemima is pretty quickly. Yes, there are clues. No, I won’t tell you what they are.

This book had some very interesting twists in it. While I won’t tell you the gory details, just know that Aunt Lydia has a very big role to play in this story. She gives more information about how the “Aunts” got their start in Gilead. She also does some things that might surprise you, considering her role in The Handmaid’s Tale and how faithful she was to Gilead in that story.

Agnes Jemima was pretty easy to figure out once a couple of clues were given, but Daisy took a tiny bit longer to figure out. I had Daisy’s true identity worked out long before it was stated in the book, but it didn’t matter.

There is action and adventure in this book. There is heartache and there are horrors that we see in our world today. You will laugh at some of the antics, be horrified by some parts of the book, and wonder what is wrong with these people in most parts of the book. It’s a must-read if you’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale and had any questions about Gilead, Offred, or Offred’s daughter.

I gave this book 5 out of 5 stars because I honestly didn’t want to stop reading it. I had to know what was going on. I had to see what would be revealed next. I know to get to the end. When I did, I was so happy because even after all this… they still treat Offred and other characters from The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments as though they could be myths. It’s awesome and I highly recommend this book.

[clementine]

I can never fault Atwood's writing; her prose is always strong, and the world she has built here is well-developed, believable, and clever. I remain stuck on the reaction I had when this novel was first announced: that it is extraneous. It seems to me fairly blatant that this is an attempt to capitalize off the popularity of the television series - if a sequel to the novel had been conceived of from the beginning, surely it would have arrived decades ago. Nothing in The Handmaid's Tale indicates that it's anything but a standalone novel. But then I have to ask myself it that matters in evaluating its merits.

I run into a lot of issues here despite Atwood's technical competence. Firstly, the narrative framing of verbal testimony is not believable. People do not speak the way Atwood has written them, especially not when giving testimony in court. (That said, I think she did a great job of differentiating the voices of all three women.) Much of the novel was predictable; I saw every major twist coming, which is disappointing to say the least.

The theme of women's complicity in their own oppression is interesting, but that thought was not pushed far enough. Can Aunt Lydia be sympathetic if she has also suffered? Can she atone? It's not that I object to the idea that even people who commit acts of extreme evil are people, with complicated histories and inner lives. (Indeed, villains generally shouldn't be presented as caricatures.) I just struggle to find any sympathy towards someone who is directly responsible for mass sexual violations of women, as well as torture and death on a large scale. This is especially true when we remember that Gilead is an explicitly white supremacist society, as depicted in The Handmaid's Tale - an element that the television show does not adopt and which The Testaments certainly glosses over. (In this novel, there doesn't appear to be any sense of racial difference.) What a missed opportunity for a timely and relevant discussion of the white woman's perpetuation of racism, the idea that white women will frequently align ourselves politically with whiteness (even if it contributes to our own oppression) over womanhood. Current right-wing populism adopts overt white supremacy as a political strategy; a novel written in the current era, which is clearly trying to reconfigure the original story of The Handmaid's Tale to make sense of contemporary society (and to fit into the modern storyworld of the show), should acknowledge this. That said, Atwood is probably not the person to incorporate a nuanced critique of white supremacy into anything she writes, given that she... hasn't ever broached that topic. In the end, the reveal that Aunt Lydia is an informant working towards the fall of Gilead feels cheap. What a tidy ending - this reversal undermines the reality of oppressive regimes, making a storybook ending out of a bleak story that was originally conceived of to mirror reality. Things are rarely so satisfying as this, and this only cheapens the original message and the insistence on plausibility as an inherent goal of speculative fiction.

Much of the power in The Handmaid's Tale was its ambiguity, its refusal to give us answers. It was the story of one woman who lacked agency and knowledge, the story of minuscule modes of resistance. We didn't have answers about where Offred ended up; we didn't even know her name. (I'm not surprised the show named her June, because that is the implication of the text - but it's never made explicit.) While The Testaments leaves something to the imagination, it is richer in information and answers enough questions (either explicitly or through implication and links to the television show) that it diminishes the power of the original text. Answers are not always possible, necessary, or desirable. In the case of The Testaments, they are a liability.