Dec 1

Dec 1 The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale, #2)

When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her — freedom, prison or death. With The Testaments, the wait is over. Margaret Atwood's sequel picks up the story more than fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.

"Dear Readers: Everything you've ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we've been living in." —Margaret Atwood

Author: Margaret Atwood | Publisher: Nan A. Talese (Doubleday)

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Rating: 4 / 5

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and I took the one most travelled by. It was littered with corpses, as such roads are. But as you will have noticed, my own corpse is not among them.”

The Testaments: the long-awaited, much-hyped sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. Co-winner of the 2019 Booker Prize (I suppose). I found this book to be a very enjoyable read, with an exciting and satisfying plot, although I’m not sure I needed it.

What made The Handmaid’s Tale so resonant was its eerie, introspective narration by Offred. It’s a masterpiece of character and point of view. We saw the entire world through her eyes, through her emotions and experiences. Was she a reliable narrator? We aren’t sure, but it was certainly haunting and impactful. And the somewhat open ending was the cherry on top, of a sort.

The Testaments is nothing like that. It is much more about plot than character or point of view, although we are not left without these things altogether. The story is told from three perspectives, 15 years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale: Aunt Lydia (YUP), a girl who grew up under the Gilead regime, and a girl who grew up in Canada at the same time. Their stories start separately, but by the end, they’re firmly entwined, with connections to one another that you come to guess as you go along.

If you read To Kill a Mockingbird and then Go Set a Watchman, it’s a similar feeling (except this one doesn’t destroy one of your literary heroes, which is nice). It’s nice to have more information, and OK, the closure is nice too, but I didn’t really NEED it. The originals stand so well on their own, that anything further feels like (and really is) fan service.

That being said, I whipped through this book quickly, because the plot moves fast. It was fun and entertaining, and I’m not sorry I read it. Definitely give it a try of your own.