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James Kidd

The Testaments
by Margaret Atwood
Chatto & Windus
4/5 stars
Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments was destined to be the literary event of 2019 long before the novel was shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker prize.
Anticipation started building a year ago, when Atwood announced the sequel to her 1985 classic, The Handmaid’s Tale : “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.”
The internet inevitably swooned, with fans promising to coordinate their holidays with the book’s launch, on September 10. Journalists quickly joined in speculating about the book’s possible themes, what Atwood might say about Donald Trump and whether sequels were a good idea in the first (or is that second) place.
The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood talks sequel The Testaments
But as publication day approached, The Testaments fell victim to the 21st-century entertainment industry’s biggest problem: the last-minute leak. Amazon spoiled Atwood’s admirable refusal to provide review copies (presumably, that is, to anyone apart from a Man Booker judge) and dispatched a couple of hundred Testaments a week early courtesy of a nicely Atwoodian technical error. After two decades of similarly hyped releases, I will admit to an unusual frisson of excitement as I wandered through London with my own copy tucked under my arm days before the global release.
Atwood’s publishers can be forgiven for the cat-and-mouse propaganda. In these unliterary, and even anti-literary, times, the book world can be excused for wringing every last bit of excitement out of headline-grabbing moments such as these. Contrast this state of affairs to video games, which are now so popular that Hollywood schedules its major releases for weekends when teen audiences won’t be bingeing on new instalments of Call of Duty or Far Cry.
What makes the anticipation of The Testaments especially refreshing is the integrity of the source material. The Handmaid’s Tale was no sooner published than it was inducted into the literary hall of fame. Set in a none-too-futuristic America, Atwood narrated a coup d’état by zealous Christian fundamentalists whose Old Testament ideology established a patriarchal, hierarchical and obsessive society. Women’s usefulness is measured by their ability to bear children and/or obedience, freedom of expression is ruthlessly controlled and thought, feeling and emotion is scrutinised by the all-seeing “Eyes”.
That story ended on the steepest of cliffhangers, as our handmaid heroine Offred, who was possibly with child, fled Gilead into an uncertain future. As Atwood noted when announcing The Testaments, questions (about Offred’s fate, about Gilead’s rise and apparent fall) have continued to be asked by generations of readers who have continued to fall under the novel’s spell over the past three-plus decades.
Cynics might argue that Atwood’s motivations were not purely literary but also commercial: see The Handmaid Tale’s recent starburst of popularity courtesy of the success of the television adaptation starring Elisabeth Moss, which itself gathered momentum from the stark divisions of Trump’s America, the #MeToo movement and abuse of women by misogynist groups such as Isis.
As American comedian Stephen Colbert put it last year, The Testaments was not a case of art imitating life, but life imitating Atwood: “Margaret Atwood is writing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, and Donald Trump is almost finished with the prequel.”


Given the variety and grandeur of all these contexts, it is almost an anticlimax to find The Testaments is, well, just a book, nothing more and nothing less. Although it takes an author as visionary as Atwood to remind us what a valuable and powerful medium books are. “Writing is dangerous,” notes Aunt Lydia early in The Testaments, a sentiment that is even more potent for being itself written in a private, and therefore dangerous confession.
Aunt Lydia is one of three narrators, none of whom are actual handmaids – a shame as it would have been nice to have a sequel titled The Handmaids’ Tales. Lydia is also the only speaker with anything like a starring role in the original and the TV show. There, she was the archetypal Gileadean proselytiser: “You must cultivate poverty of spirit. Blessed are the meek. She didn’t go on to say any­thing about inheriting the Earth.” Here, Atwood fleshes her out as older, “swollen with power”, far more complex, but still inherently pragmatic, not least when she recalls the creation of Gilead itself.
Having underestimated the fundamentalist forces that staged the coup, the “educated” Lydia realises she will be first against the wall when the reprisals begin. Survival means drawing on the same determination and adapt­ability that propelled her rise from poverty to judge: “None of my college-acquired polish was of any use to me here. I needed to revert to the mulish underclass kid, the determined judge, the brainy overachiever […] I needed to work the angles, once I could find out what the angles were.”
Implicit in Lydia’s voice is Gilead’s continued survival, although in more precarious form than the original novel. Lydia now seems to be playing the subtlest of fifth-column games, simultaneously propping up the regime and plot­ting its downfall – one clue is her consultation of illicit books such as Jane Eyre and Paradise Lost.
What to read in 2019 – Haruki Murakami, Margaret Atwood and R.F. Kuang’s second novel
This enticing and frequently disturbing account slithers around two others, each told by younger women, one with­in Gilead and one outside. The first is Agnes, who leads a gilded Gilead existence that quickly tarnishes through little fault of her own: her fate, we learn in the plot’s unifying twist, has been decided before her birth, although Atwood’s gendered dystopia suggests that is true for just about everyone else, too.
Gilead’s ideology ensures that the teenage Agnes reflects on “the adult female body [as] one big booby trap”, pun doubtless intended: “If there was a hole, something was bound to be shoved into it and something else was bound to come out.” This dire prognostication is something Gilead’s sleazy, entitled and complacent men are only too happy to ram home: take the flesh-crawling dental examination by Dr Grove. What makes this scene all the more appalling is the complicity of others, men and women, in the transgres­sion. But instead of protest or complaint, the only avenue open to Agnes is silence.
A more active, and activist alter ego is dramatised by Agnes’ mirror image, Daisy, who is raised in a happy but perpetually skittish household in Canada – time and Atwood’s plot will eventually reveal why. These spoilers aren’t all that difficult to guess, but are well worth being teased out by each reader. Suffice to say, Daisy like Agnes has plenty of revelations to withstand, accommodate herself to and learn from. In her case, their exact nature is less important than the need to resist and fight, no matter the personal cost.
It is something of a relief to write that The Testaments is a worthy contender for book of the year, and not only because it has so much to live up to. As well as continuing a much-loved and even revered story with dignity, the story itself is absorbing, affecting and also great fun. Far from feeling intimidated, Atwood seems to be having a ball meeting the challenge she set herself, inserting crafty, even salacious nods to the TV series (“moss has sprouted in my damper crevices”).

Each of her narrators has so much at stake that you will tear through the pages like you are reading the new Lee Child, but unlike Jack Reacher, Lydia, Agnes and Daisy will linger in the mind long after you finish the novel. This owes much to Atwood’s prose, which is as blackly funny as ever. The most gloriously deadpan line in The Handmaid’s Tale was: “The Commander f***s, with a regular two-four marching stroke, on and on like a tap dripping.” Here, it is Aunt Lydia pondering: “‘Penises,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Them again.’”
That Lydia steals the show casts no shadow across Daisy or Agnes. Lydia’s weathered voice is essentially that of an individual facing impossible choices in the midst of merci­less despotism. In this she provides the reader with a test and a warning.
While it is easy to condemn the young Lydia’s self-serv­ing scheming, Atwood whispers the question: what would you do in her shoes? With society turning into your worst nightmare, what principle would you ditch to preserve your life or, to put this in Gileadese, your soul? And what happens when you look back over your life only to see better, braver and wiser choices you should have made?
That people are facing these very choices at this very second, only sharpens the intensity of reading The Testaments. While its topicality will wane like all works of art, it won’t be long before the world will be dark enough for Atwood to be hailed as a prophet all over again.


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Books and literature

The Testaments, sequel to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, is well worth the 34-year wait

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, a worthy – and topical – sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale.

Margaret Atwood, left, consulted on - and cameos in - Hulu's adaptation of her novel "The Handmaid's Tale." Elisabeth Moss, right, stars in the series. MUST CREDIT: Hulu.

The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood talks sequel The Testaments, and return to Gilead

A still from The Handmaid’s Tale, based on the novel by Margaret Atwood. She talks about her sequel, The Testaments. Photo: Hulu via AP

This image released by Hulu shows Elisabeth Moss as Offred in a scene from, "The Handmaid's Tale." Moss was nominated for a Golden Globe award for best actress in a drama series or motion picture made for TV on Monday, Dec. 11, 2017. The 75th Golden Globe Awards will be held on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2018 on NBC. (George Kraychyk/Hulu via AP)

This cover image released by Nan A. Talese shows "The Testaments," by Margaret Atwood. The novel will be released on Sept. 10. (Nan A. Talese via AP)

The Handmaid's Tale

This Aug. 21, 2019 photo shows author Margaret Atwood posing for a portrait in Toronto, Canada. The longtime Toronto resident has written the year’s most anticipated novel, “The Testaments,” the sequel to her classic “The Handmaid’s Tale” and a Booker Prize finalist. In December, Atwood will be honored in New York by the Center for Fiction, which has given its first ever On Screen Award to her and to Hulu executives for the Emmy-winning adaptation of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP)

FILE PHOTO: Award-winning Canadian writer Margaret Atwood smiles as she speaks during the ceremony of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels) at the Church of St. Paul in Frankfurt, Germany, October 15, 2017. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo

Stephen King to Margaret Atwood, 10 new books out September you can’t miss

Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale is called The Testaments, and is just one book to look out for in September.

The Testaments

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The Institute by Stephen King

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Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte brings Cervantes’ epic Don Quixote into the modern age

Author Salman Rushdie, whose new novel, Quichotte, is inspired by Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Photo: AFP

Salman Rushdie, Quichotte

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Few sequels have been as hotly anticipated – or as timely – as this long-awaited novel
The follow-up to Atwood’s dystopian masterpiece is a worthy second instalment



Few sequels have been as hotly anticipated – or as timely – as this long-awaited novel, and the follow-up to Atwood’s 1985 dystopian masterpiece is a worthy second instalment.


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.css-1mniedq{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;} Few sequels have been as hotly anticipated – or as timely – as this long-awaited novel The follow-up to Atwood’s dystopian masterpiece is a worthy second instalment

Few sequels have been as hotly anticipated – or as timely – as this long-awaited novel

The follow-up to Atwood’s dystopian masterpiece is a worthy second instalment