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The Testaments is Margaret Atwood’s response to fans that have been clamoring for answers about the fate of characters from her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale. This original text has taken on a new relevance in the Trump Era, as the religious right has risen to prominence once again, and women across the globe have been responding in protest, donning white bonnets and red dresses as an homage to Atwood’s dystopian novel. With reproductive rights in increasing danger, and the casualness with which sexual assault perpetrated by political leaders has been excused, women are beginning to fear for their bodily autonomy, which is why the original novel has taken on such a renewed importance. In addition, the highly successful Hulu adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale means that despite being thirty-five years in the making, this sequel is as buzzworthy as ever. In fact, it is nearly impossible to effectively imagine The Testaments separate from the conditions in which it was produced, as the novel’s timeline gives the television creators some wiggle room for a couple more seasons, and the novel seems to often drift into the “fan service” trap of hotly anticipated sequels.
The Testaments begins fifteen years after the close of The Handmaid’s Tale, when a pregnant Offred/June was hauled into the back of a van with her unborn child, awaiting an uncertain fate of either punishment or escape. This novel is split into three narrative voices, two of whom are young women who have grown up on the opposite side of the border between Canada and Gilead. One is the daughter of one of Gilead’s most powerful Commanders, and the other is raised in Canada by atheistic parents who own a secondhand clothing boutique. The third voice is Aunt Lydia, the leader of Gilead’s Aunts who is characterized in The Handmaid’s Tale as a strict disciplinarian. This novel sheds new light on Aunt Lydia, as the reader finds out that Lydia has been a crucial member of the resistance in Gilead, who has consolidated power through a vast surveillance network in order to collect enough dirt to overthrow the corrupt leaders of the country. This book is her secret historical register, constructed as a manuscript that is meant to outlive its author and Gilead itself. The arcs of these three women will indeed coalesce, as Daisy, the girl living in Canada, soon finds out that she is not actually a Canadian citizen, but she is the baby that Offred/June had smuggled out of Gilead fifteen years ago, Baby Nicole, who has been co-opted as a political symbol. Her adoptive parents were actually resistance operatives who had been charged with keeping her safe, and when the two of them are killed in a car bomb, Daisy is smuggled by the resistance back into Gilead, for protection under the watchful eyes of Aunt Lydia, who also sees Baby Nicole as an important political tool for the resistance. In Gilead, the relationship between the two young female narrators becomes clear (I won’t spoil anything but it was fairly easy to predict), and the girls become involved in Aunt Lydia’s plot to overthrow the Republic of Gilead.
The most pleasurable elements of the novel for me were the sections written by Aunt Lydia, as the espionage plots felt very sharp and urgent, capturing some of the wit and bite that made the first novel such a sensation. The problem of The Testaments is that almost all of its compelling points already exist in The Handmaid’s Tale, and this novel offers no new layers to that biting cultural critique, and can sometimes feel like a surface-level rehashing of the themes of the first novel. Reader’s looking for additional insight into the particulars of how evil, misogyny, and authoritarianism intersect will not find what they are looking for in this novel. But readers who simply want to live in Atwood’s universe a little longer will find exactly what they were looking for. Needless to say, Atwood’s voice is as strong as ever, and her talent for narrative prose and characteristic wit are intact, which makes the novel an enjoyable and somewhat suspenseful read. The novel doesn’t dig any deeper into the quandaries that were brought to light in The Handmaid’s Tale, but rather expands in its surface narrative. The Testaments is not Atwood at the height of her powers, but it is a compelling and well-paced narrative in an expertly devised universe, which is nothing to scoff at.