Margaret Atwood

THE NUMBER 1 BESTSELLER AND WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 'The Testaments is Atwood at her best . . . To read this book is to feel the world turning' Anne Enright The Republic of Gilead is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, two girls with radically different experiences of the regime come face to face with the legendary, ruthless Aunt Lydia. But how far will each go for what she believes? Now with additional material: book club discussion points and an interview with Margaret Atwood about the real-life events that inspired The Testaments and The Handmaid's Tale. PRAISE FOR THE TESTAMENTS: 'Everything The Handmaid's Tale fans wanted and more. Prepare to hold your breath throughout, and to cry real tears at the end' Stylist 'Atwood challenges us constantly and poses the question that lies like a pearl inside the shell of this frighteningly readable novel, "Before you sit in judgement, how would you behave in Gilead?''' Sunday Telegraph

The Booker prize-winning sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

The Testaments

Beatrix

I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?

I am still, I am still, I am still…undetectable?motionless?here?alive?

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.

Only an idiot would have believed this, so I did.

ahah. the buildup for this, funny funny. 

So men had something in their heads that was like fingers, only a sort of fingers girls did not have. 

aahh Margaret Atwood just doing her marvellous, murky space and character creating thing

.. 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.

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.

Jolien De Landsheer

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.

"I should have gone with you; she said. "But he's the best dentist. Everyone agrees."

She knew. Or she suspected. She was warning me not to say anything. That was the kind of coded language they used. Or I should say: that we all used.

Some girls had reported such things. One had claimed their Guardian had run his hands over her legs. Another had said that an Econo trash collector had unzipped his trousers in front of her. The first girl had had the backs of her legs whipped for lying, the second had been told that nice girls did not notice the minor antics of men, they simply looked the other way.

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.

Maja

A Novel

Testaments

Sarah Sammis

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

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE The Testaments is a modern masterpiece, a powerful novel that can be read on its own or as a companion to Margaret Atwood's classic, The Handmaid's Tale. More than fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, the theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third: Aunt Lydia. Her complex past and uncertain future unfold in surprising and pivotal ways. With The Testaments, Margaret Atwood opens up the innermost workings of Gilead, as each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes.

Marie

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)]

Dani

Impossible to put down, read in a day. Provides a different angle to Gilead, and is insightfully written.

eileen sheats

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.

“You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.”
--
I feel like this book was a victim of its own hype.
It is hard to follow up on a book that is so powerful and well written in the first place. And so, a sequel years after the original was met with a tremendous amount of scepticism and preconceived dislike.

Honestly, I don’t understand what the fuss is about. Of course, The Testaments couldn’t be as good as A Handmaid’s Tale: the horrifying dystopia that is Gilead was already greatly known, discussed, and the concept was a big part of popular culture. What more could be said about that world?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. In the sequel, we get much more insight into Gilead: how could such a terrible place be built, and accepted in the first place? Obviously, the Handmaids and the Marthas had no choice but obey out of fear, but how could the Aunts and the Wives justify their actions? Did they actually believe all that Gilead offered, or was it just a power play? And how (if ever) could such a tyranny crumble?

The sequel answers a lot of the questions I had asked myself while reading the first one. It offers a view of the dystopia from other perspectives, and looking into Gilead is just irresistible. With all that morbid curiosity and dread, that makes it hard to look away from a terrible car accident.

hileahrious

Nicholas Barnard

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. 

Elizabeth Denny

Loved Aunt Lydia's parts but Nicole/Jade and Agnes' parts just read like YA. Such a tone shift from the original book!

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. 

Alisha 

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. 

Lamia Hajani

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. 

Shae

Obsessed. This book completes the story so well. If you liked the first book or the show, I def recommend this book to you 

Leah Diaz 

Ed Kay

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!

Andrew Louis

Alexa M

"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. 

Zoey Novak

alex 

thoroughly enjoyed it but I do think the last 50~ pages felt rushed.

The theocratic regime of the Republic of Gilead maintains its grip on power, but there are signs it is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, the lives of three radically different women converge, with potentially explosive results. Two have grown up as part of the first generation to come of age in the new order. The testimonies of these two young women are joined by a third voice: a woman who wields power through the ruthless accumulation and deployment of secrets. Each woman is forced to come to terms with who she is, and how far she will go for what she believes. -- adapted from jacket

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.

Frederik De Bosschere

Ben Jenkins

I loved the worldbuilding in the first half of the book but the overall covert action-movie plot was weak and the second half of the book felt much more rushed and thin.

Beatriz Pereira

I love Margaret Atwood writing so much. Contrary to some people's belief I thought this book was needed and totally worth reading. It's amazing how there's always something to look for but also how peaceful and at the same time disturbing everything is.

Cindy Lieberman

** spoiler alert **
           A satisfying conclusion to the Handmaid’s Tale that takes place many years in the future, as told through the letters, diary entries and testimonies of 3 important characters: Aunt Lydia, Agnes and “Baby Nicole.” It will be interesting to see if the Hulu series is consistent with the author’s view, especially as it relates to Aunt Lydia. As Ms Atwood states at the end, it’s not a blueprint for bringing down a totalitarian regime for, although we may need one soon, there’s no one right way to accomplish this.

Ahmed Salem

Thank you Margret for all the good work put in this story. Thank you for reminding us how we could find our way out of a totalitarian regimes, and finding a better tomorrow for those who would come after us.

The Testaments The Booker prize-winning sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

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