Oh boy, where to begin. I read The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time two years ago and I was terrified. I agree with the many think pieces on how the timing was right for a resurgence, what with the creeping anti-abortion laws in the southern States. Despite this, I always thought that Canada was beyond the American abortion debate but the last two years suggest otherwise: Alberta elected an anti-abortion Premier (Jason Kenny) and the leader of our official Opposition Party (Andrew Scheer) is also anti-abortion. I digress from my book review, but the point I want to make (and that I think Atwood was making) is that the control of women, in a myriad of ways and forms, has happened before and can happen again- western society’s progress towards ‘greater freedom’ is not inevitable or guaranteed.
One more point on The Handmaid’s Tale: I loved/hated the ambivalence of the ending in The Handmaid’s Tale. I hated it because I wanted Offred to make it and there was no certainty that her ending was happy; conversely I loved it because the ambivalence in Offred’s fate is key in scaring us out of complacency. Essentially, at the end of the The Handmaid’s Tale, although part of me wanted more, I would have said, like fellow Cannonballer Carriejay, that a follow-up wasn’t necessary.
You will be shocked to hear that Margaret Atwood wasn’t listening to me, and this year gave us The Testaments. This follow up is set 15 years after Handmaid ends, and gives us three first-person narrators: Daisy, a teenage girl living in Canada; Agnes, a teenage girl living in Gilead; and Aunt Lydia, returning character/villainess from The Handmaid’s Tale. Atwood has been explicit about how her starting point for the novel was considering ‘how does a dictatorship end?’ This novel does exactly that, and because this is a more hopeful point than ‘what does it look like when women’s rights are taken away’, The Testaments is more hopeful novel. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but will say that my favourite parts of the novel were the Aunt Lydia parts- she is such a complicated character and Atwood did a fabulous job fleshing her out from the glimpses we received in Handmaid.
Was The Testaments necessary? No. Was it enjoyable? Very.
#CbrBingo11- Cannonballer Says. I’m late to this party- I’m the 6th Cannonball review for The Testaments, after ClaireBadger, Classic, Carriejay, Val Veeter and MrsLangdonAlger- all of which I read before writing my review (nice work Cannonballers!)