The Testaments

Bear witness to the secretive lives of Gilead's women 15 years after THE HANDMAID'S TALE's conclusion. Narrator Ann Dowd, known for her role on the television adaptation, is formidable as Aunt Lydia. Hearing her resonant narration of diary entries allows listeners to feel the horror of early Gilead, be disturbed by the aunt's complicity, and discover her secrets. Bryce Dallas Howard's sweet narration of the Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A provides a window onto the extreme restrictions of girlhood in Gilead. Mae Whitman's snarky rendition of Witness 369B's testimony reflects a privileged youth in Canada, where she unwittingly triggers dramatic changes. Listening adds an entirely new dimension to a riveting tale. Atwood narrates section headings and her note, and Tantoo Cardinal and Derek Jacobi nail the scholarly conclusion. E.E.C. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

One of the most memorable, ominous lines from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale is: ‘In a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it.’ In the long-awaited sequel, The Testaments, the water has well and truly boiled. Set a decade and a half later, the totalitarian state of Gilead has evolved into a corrupt, nightmarish world in which citizens have grown to accept the most insidious realities with frightening ease. The story unfolds through the eyes of three separate characters. Nicole, the now sixteen-year-old daughter of Offred, is living safely in Canada. Agnes Jemima, Offred’s eldest daughter, who was stolen from Offred and her husband, Luke, has been raised by foster parents inside Gilead. Both sisters are searching for an understanding of their family’s past. We barely hear from Offred herself, but we sense her legacy. She has been declared a terrorist and enemy of the state, and she has survived two assassination attempts. The third voice is that of Aunt Lydia, who readers came to know in the first book as a terrifying, sadistic enforcer of women’s subjection as the head of the Red Centre that trains handmaids to be sexual slaves. In The Testaments, however, we learn of her true motivations. She is a survivor, a woman doing what is necessary to survive a ruthless regime and collecting damning evidence against the elite while she’s at it. As always, Atwood’s skill as a storyteller makes for a propulsive, thrilling read. It is an emboldening book that has arrived at the perfect time. Reviewed by Emma Harvey

Is it possible to compose a satisfying sequel to a novel that’s become a modern classic? That’s a challenge in itself, but the difficulty goes up exponentially if said novel has also been turned into a blockbuster TV series.  In her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), which outlined a near future in which women’s freedom had been completely curtailed, celebrated Canadian writer Margaret Atwood leaps these hurdles with Olympian ease. The Testaments is a crowd-pleasing page turner. Atwood leans in to the attractions of both her original novel, with its Scheherazade-style narration, and the TV series, with its resistance-minded heroine.  The Testaments is told in the first person by three narrators, allowing for a more panoramic view of Gilead than the cloistered Handmaid Offred could provide. The voice that flows with the most relish from Atwood’s pen, and that will be the most familiar to readers, is the Machiavellian Aunt Lydia. In Gilead’s patriarchal society, which categorizes women according to their function (Handmaids, for example, exist solely to bear children), Aunts are responsible for enforcing these roles. As a privileged member of an oppressed class, Aunt Lydia makes every decision with maintaining her status in mind.  The other two narrators are young girls: one raised within Gilead’s walls by a powerful Commander and his wife, and the other raised in Canada as the child of Mayday resistance operatives. As their stories unfold, it becomes clear that the power to bring Gilead down may be in their hands.  If a book must be groundbreaking to be a true classic, The Testaments can’t be ranked alongside its predecessor. Today, the divide between genre and literary fiction is more porous, and dystopian fiction is an established genre—in large part thanks to novels like The Handmaid’s Tale. But just as The Handmaid’s Tale was a response to the backlash against the women’s movements of the 1970s, The Testaments is equally of its time, drawing from contemporary politics in ways that resonate. Atwood remains a keen chronicler of power and the way status (or lack thereof) affects how it is leveraged, and seeing her explore that issue in Gilead once again is a pleasure.