The Testaments The Booker prize-winning sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale
Reviews
What a brilliant way to come back with a second part to answer questions that were out there since 1985.
This book has quickly risen to one of my top reads of the year. The three different perspectives from the narrators provided such an amazing deep dive into my questions after finishing The Handmaid's Tale. My favorite aspect of the book was the new insight we received on Aunt Lydia and the type of person she was forced to become AND overcome. I recommend this book deeply to everyone, as I did with The Handmaid's Tale. The audiobook especially brings a whole new level to the book because different actors and actresses play different roles.
I like that this book is timed so far ahead in the future that we know (for sure) that Gilead is no more. The totalitarian state has crumbled down, and even though I know it's *Just* a story, it gives me comfort that this kind of system gets no more runs for the money. I can imagine how hard it must be to write a "sequel" to a book where the TV series is ongoing at the moment, but Atwood did well. It gives closure to most of the things with a little surprise about how really is runs the Mayday network. Still, the Handmaid's Tale so much better than The Testament, like any other stories that need sequels.
I mean, 5 stars is a given because I’m biased towards Atwood but badass Aunt Lydia was amazing. Atwood generally tends to focus on character development, whereas this read more like your typical page turning thriller. Definitely a bit of a different vibe from her other works but I loved!
was okay, sorta had the ending figured out by the first half lol
he Testaments by Margaret Atwood is the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale (1981). I read the original back in 2005, before this site had settled on being a daily book blog. I haven't seen the television series so all my thoughts on the book will be contained to the current book and what I recall of the original. It's fifteen years after the close of The Handmaid's Tale, but frankly sometimes it feels more like thirty-eight years (the time between publications). The narrative is broken up into three points of view: a woman who runs the school, a girl destined to be a wife, and a girl who lives outside of Gilead but was born there. CC6666 - siblings home offroad http://pussreboots.com/blog/2019/comm...
A very interesting peek into Gilead, this time from the perspective not of a Handmaid, but of three other types of women - an Aunt, a future Wife, and a teenage girl from the other side of the border (Canada). This way way more suspenseful than I anticipated, allover an expertly crafted narrative, but I expected no less from Margaret Atwood. My only complaint is that it didn't quite make sense to me why (view spoiler)[Nicole had to go to Gilead herself. She seems absolutely unfit, and literally anyone else could have done what she did. (hide spoiler)]
Impossible to put down, read in a day. Provides a different angle to Gilead, and is insightfully written.
Aunt Lydia's voice in this is phenomenal. I think Atwood did a great job here. I wasn't as much of a fan of Daisy or Agnes, some of the material seemed a little contrived. But it was definitely a really engaging book and I blasted through the second half.
Good stuff, nice closure.
the testaments takes its predecessors key themes - namely the politics of survival, complicity and power - into arguably more complex and challenging territory. Atwood is no longer interested in victimisation; how we become complicit in systems of oppression and domination proves to be a more interesting question for her.
A brilliant way to end the Handmaids of tale gave a clear ending to the story.
Loved Aunt Lydia's parts but Nicole/Jade and Agnes' parts just read like YA. Such a tone shift from the original book!
Engrossing
I accidentally came across this book in a charity shop and this was the first I’d heard of it!
Not a necessary book but one I needed in my life. I adore Margaret Atwood’s writing style and she has potential to be one of my favourite authors.
Can be a difficult read in some areas but with heaps of imagination and closure with characters I never thought possible, I was hooked from the beginning.
I probably should have read The Handmaid's Tale a second time shortly before reading this book. I forgot a lot of things that happened in the first book. And I still had a few questions after finishing this book. Nonetheless, it's a good read even independently of the initial book. I would venture to say that this book wasn't necessary, but I welcome its existence nonetheless.
Better than I expected. Hard to read at points due to the subject matter, but enjoyable.
Obsessed. This book completes the story so well. If you liked the first book or the show, I def recommend this book to you
OK, but disappointing. Felt like a dumbed-down, thriller style sequel, with none of the incredible writing and allegory and allusion that characterised the Handmaid's Tale. Sure, it tied up some loose ends and added depth to the original story, but I don't feel like it added all that much. Not sure how it was deemed worthy of the Booker!
YA dystopian
"The adult female body was one big booby trap as far as I could tell. If there was a hole, something was bound to be shoved into it and something else was bound to come out, and that went for any kind of hole: a hold in the wall, a hole in a mountain, a hole in the ground. There were so many things that could be done to it or go wrong with it, this adult female body, that I was left feeling i would be better off without it." i really liked this but in completely different ways than The Handmaid's Tale. whereas THT is simply a woman's story, this one focuses a lot more on actual plot. the first half of the book was interesting but I only felt drawn to one of the POVs. however, past the midway point, I started finding all 3 POVs interesting. the entire book was very fast-paced which was nice, but the ending was a little rushed in my opinion.
SO GOOD! If you read the handmaids tale you MUST read the sequel! Follows the story of Aunt Lydia and the handmaid’s 2 daughters.
thoroughly enjoyed it but I do think the last 50~ pages felt rushed.
It was engrossing to be back in the republic of Gilead, Margaret Atwood's credible alternate history. The addition of multiple narrators is a welcome one, especially as they converge into a nicely-paced payoff.
Highlights
That was a talent women had because of their special brains, which were not hard and focused like the brains of men but soft and damp and warm and enveloping, like... like what? She didn't finish the sentence.
Like mud in the sun, I thought. That's what was inside my head: warmed-up mud.
The adult female body was one big booby trap as far as I could tell. If there was a hole, something was bound to be shoved into it and something else was bound to come out, and that went for any kind of hole […].
I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?
In the early days of Gilead, I used to ask myself whether I was Fox or Cat.
..Obviously I was both, since - unlike many - here I still am. I still have a bag of tricks. And I’m still high in the tree.
I am still, I am still, I am still…undetectable?motionless?here?alive?
Very mantra-like
Only an idiot would have believed this, so I did.
So men had something in their heads that was like fingers, only a sort of fingers girls did not have.
ahah. the buildup for this, funny funny.
concept men doing important thinking things that women couldn’t do because ‘they had smaller brains.. incapable of thinking large thoughts’… ‘It would be like trying to teach a cat to crochet…how ridiculous! Cat didn’t even have fingers! So…
.. I could hear her heart hammering away inside her - faster and faster, it seemed to me, as she waited for me to say something. I knew my answer had power: I could make her smile, or not.
What could I say but yes and yes? Yes, I was happy. Yes, I was lucky. Anyway it was true.
aahh Margaret Atwood just doing her marvellous, murky space and character creating thing
I hope you will remember, too, that we all have some nostalgia for whatever kindness we have known as children, however bizarre the conditions of that childhood may seem to others.
Reign of terror, they used to say, but terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes.
He thinks of me as his handiwork: I am the embodiment of his will.
The women in charge handed them tissues. They said calm things like You need to be strong. They were trying to make things better. But it can put a lot of pressure on a person to be told they need to be strong. That's another thing I've learned.
Why cry, you should be happy, you got out. But after all that's happened to me since that day, I understand why. You hold it in, whatever it is, until you can make it through the worst part. Then, once you're safe, you can cry all the tears you couldn't waste time crying before.
You don't believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.
I made choices, and then, having made them, I had fewer choices. 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.
Then they would give me scraps of bread dough to play with, and I would make a man out of dough, and they would bake it in the oven with whatever else they were baking. I always made dough men, I never made dough women, because after they were baked I would eat them, and that made me feel I had a secret power over men. It was becoming clear to me that, despite the urges Aunt Vidala said I aroused in them, I had no power over them otherwise.
Spróbuj nie myślećo mnie zbyt źle, przynajmniej nie gorzej, niż sama myślę o sobie.
Nikt nie chce umierać - oświadczyła Becka. - Jednak niektórzy ludzie nie chcą żyć w żaden z dostępnych im sposobów.
Kiedy zacznę o sobie myśleć jak o kimś, kto już nie żyje, nie martwi się przyszłością, wszystko stanie się łatwiejsze.
Byłam w wieku, kiedy rodzice zmieniają się nagle z ludzi wszech. wiedzących w takich, co nie wiedzą nic.
Jedynie zmarli mają prawo do pomników, ale ja otrzymałam swój już za życia. Już jestem skamieniała.