The Testaments

by Margaret Atwood

This is the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, it was just announced as a joint winner of the Mann Booker Prize this year.

I recently re-read The Handmaid's Tale.  I found it interesting, and disturbing yet again.   The ideas Atwood presents in this book in terms of the rituals, sex scenes with the commanders, the handmaids and the wives are absolutely chilling.

I was wondering how she would follow up the first book and I have to say The Testaments was different, perhaps even better in some ways.  It is the story of three women, whose lives are intertwined.  It is a story and a bit of a mystery novel.  We find that a child was secreted away from Gilead and taken to Canada.  The baby's picture is plastered around Gilead and the baby is being vigourously sought as it would be a coup if Gilead could recapture her.  There are women called angels who go into Canada, supposedly to preach about Gilead but they are actually spies seeking information about the baby and about people who help women and children escape from Gilead.

One of the characters is a young woman who is shocked at the death of the people she thought were her parents.  She is shocked to learn that she is that baby.  We also meet a young girl who is basically ignored by her father and his new wife, especially when they have a child by a handmaid.  She is being groomed to be married but convinces the officials, including Aunt Lydia that she is committed to life as an Aunt.  She does not want to get married.  Another friend of hers also becomes an aunt (she was traumatized by being sexually abused by her father, a highly regarded dentist).  We meet Aunt Lydia who is probably the most powerful of the aunts and learn that Gilead has records of all women, children born, etc.  Aunt Lydia is secretly writing a journal about what has happened in Gilead. If she was found out she would be hung.

As the book progresses we learn that the main character in Handmaid's Tale (Offred), was able to escape to Canada.  The daughter she had with her husband also survived. At the end of the novel Offred and her two children are re-united.  Eventually the notes written by Aunt Lydia are found but no one knows that she is the one who wrote them.

I enjoyed the way Atwood developed the story and how the various people's lives intertwined.  I am not sure why Aunt Lydia did what she did.

The books starts with the person who is Aunt Lydia and other professional women being rounded up.  In life she was a respected judge. Rather than fighting she decides to commit to becoming part of the Gilead administration.  This was the most disturbing and intriguing part of the story to me, that someone who was a defender of the law and should be committed to human rights would abandon all that to survive and in fact become an architect and perpetrator of the vile Gilead empire.  And, in the end why did she write these notes?  To apologize for what she was part of?  As a lesson for the future?