The Handmaid’s Tale #2 The Testaments by Margaret Atwood 3.5/5 Awards: Booker Prize (2019), Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction (2019), Scotiabank Giller Prize Nominee (2019), Locus Award Nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel (2020), Audie Award Nominee for Audiobook of the Year (2020), Prometheus Award Nominee for Best Novel (2020) Version française: Les Testaments Summary 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. My thoughts In the wise words of Tatianna, as a writer, I make choices. One such choice was to not write a review for The Handmaid’s Tale when I read it in January 2020. In all honesty, the world did not need another rave review for how amazing the book is; the subject has been covered. Now, when Atwood announced that she was writing a sequel more than thirty years after the original, I was skeptic. Indeed, we see how well that went for Harper Lee. However, as I've said many times before, my mother buys everything Atwood writes, so why not give it a try (if I don't have to pay for it). My expectations were not high, and I am glad because The Testaments pales in comparison to the original. Albeit, The Testaments had the impossible task of living up to the legacy of Handmaid’s Tale. In many ways, if you read both books without knowing the author’s name, it would be hard to guess they are written by the same individual. It remains an entertaining novel, but cannot be compared with some of Atwood’s much better works. Part of what made The Handmaid’s Tale so brilliant was its world-building. Getting to know the ins and outs of this new, ultra-religious Republic of Gilead where women’s roles varied depending on class and reproductive abilities. However, there is none of that in The Testaments since we are already familiar with the Gilead world. Despite happening fifteen years later, Gilead did not change much. We do get a more comprehensive look into the May Day organization and their activism. However, our main characters are kept mostly in the dark for security reasons. This situation is entirely plausible, but it also means that, as readers, we are unaware of what happens at May Day, who runs the place, what is the day-to-day work like, what are their programs and measures. There was so much unexploited potential there, after all, who does not like a good spy organization/refugee extraction/rebellion plot. We are given a bit more clues towards the end, but it was overall unsatisfying.
In terms of plot points, Atwood has accustomed us to more sophistication. The Testaments often feels expected, and, it pains me to say, almost out of a cheesy dystopian novel. Atwood's psychoanalysis of characters and the subtlety of plot points has made her brand. In here, everything feels much more explosive and predictable, especially towards the end. I was not convinced by the many classic tropes, such as the 'long-lost-forgotten-daughter-that-can-save-everything' or the idea to 'bring-an-end-to-Gilead,' which felt particularly lazy. The book hypes us to the eventual fall of Gilead (this is no spoiler, it is outlined in the first chapters), but when it comes down to it, Atwood presents us a very early-2010s YA version of the fall of an authoritarian government. By that, I mean that we see the initial cracks, but nothing more, an easy way out. The meat of the subject should not just how the rebellion gradually weakened the state, but also how the crash unfolded and society rebuilt. In Handmaid’s Tale and Testaments, Atwood uses real-life references to women's treatment and their place in society, yet, there is little realism in The Testaments’ plot. The comparison with dystopian novels does bring some positives such as its fast pace, another total change from Handmaid’s Tale. Personally, I believe this is why the book is better rated than its predecessors: it feels much more commercial and easier to digest. It is more familiar. This switch is disappointing to me, but understandable. As for the characters, I always love a novel with alternating points of view that converge into one. The characters themselves were fine, unsurprising. Aunt Lydia, whom we already knew from Handmaid's Tale, was my favourite. Again, who does not love a good double-agent story? She is the more traditional Atwood character: morally flawed but with a good heart, cunning and, above all, wicked smart. Despite not being wildly original, Aunt Lydia plays her part and plays it well. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same of the others. The trio of Agnes, Becka and Jade was boring. Agnes and Becka have no emotional depth, no real personalities beyond a couple vague traits. This portrayal could be justified since they are indoctrinated children, but, even as the book progresses, we see little character development. (Minor spoiler: how cliché is it for Becka to be renamed Immortelle at the convent?) Even Jade is nothing more than your classic rebellious teenager with fighting skills. Call her Katniss Everdeen (The Hunger Games), Juliette Ferrars (Shatter Me) or Beatrice Prior (Divergent). Overall, The Testaments feels like a dystopian book that I would have loved ten years ago when I lived and breathed YA. However, compared to Atwood's other works, it is frankly underwhelming. In many ways, it feels more commercial and accessible. Again, this in itself is not bad, but it is not what I expect nor want from Atwood. If she continues in this new direction, I look forward to reading more of her older works to find bone-chilling stories with astute characters and rich plot lines. If you liked The Testaments, you will love… The Mara Dyer series by Michelle Hodkin A Border Passage by Leila Ahmed Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
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