REVIEW: The Testaments

By Denise @ Life With No Plot on June 19, 2023 • ( 0 )

About the Book

Title: The Testaments

Author: Margaret Atwood

Series: The Handmaid’s Tale #2

Genre: Dystopian Fiction

Pages: 422

Edition Read: Hardcover Library Book

Dates Read: February 17-18, 2023

Blurb: 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.

In this brilliant sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalized readers for decades.

“Dear Readers: Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.” –Margaret Atwood

Review

Gah, this book! I couldn’t stop reading, as you could probably guess – I devoured a 400+ page book in two days. I first read The Handmaid’s Tale back in 2017 and really enjoyed it, but it left so many questions in my brain. I was so glad when I found out that The Testaments existed! I had no idea!

As the blurb said, this story is actually the story of three different women: Agnes, a young daughter inside Gilead who has been born and raised within their ideology; Daisy, a young woman from outside of Gilead who might have a huge secret; and the infamous Aunt Lydia – if you’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale (or seen the Hulu show), you know exactly who she is.

Of the three, I was most interested to hear from Daisy. When you read Handmaid, it feels like Gilead is so powerful and, even though we see a few foreign tourists visiting it, we have no idea what the outside world thinks about what goes on there. Turns out, they aren’t particularly thrilled about it, which is why organizations formed to help smuggle people (mostly women) out of Gilead. Daisy ends up working for one of these groups and, in the process, learns the truth of her own history.

Agnes is a really sweet character and it was interesting to see what Gilead looks like through the eyes of someone who was born into it. This is the only life she has ever known, so to her it doesn’t seem odd, at least not at first. Once she enters training to become an Aunt and sees a bit more of what really goes on, her entire shortsighted worldview is challenged and she has some pretty big decisions to make.

And then there is Aunt Lydia. We get to learn exactly how Lydia became who she is, how her life changed when Gilead took over, and how an ambitious woman could rise in power, despite the patriarchal society’s grip on everything. She is such a fascinating, morally ambiguous character! She did some pretty horrible things and helped a lot of horrible people in doing so, but she is also a survivor and rebels in her own way in order to keep her position and stay alive.

Overall, this book was amazing. If you read The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoyed it, you should definitely read this one if you haven’t yet. It fills in so many gaps and makes the entire story world feel that much richer.

GoodReads rating: 5 stars