Author : Margaret Atwood
Narrators : Ann Dowd, Mae Whitman, Bryce Dallas Howard
Genre : Dystopian/Sci-fi
Publisher : Random House Audio
Listening Length : 13 hours 18 minutes
Rating : 4.5/5
Narrator Rating : 4.5/5
The Testaments is a sequel to The Handmaids Tale, set 15 years after the events of that book. Atwood wrote this in coordination with the Hulu series, which depicts many of the events not in the book version of The Handmaid’s Tale. So if you have been watching the series on Hulu (like I have), The Testaments feels more like a continuation of that than the book.
The Testaments is told from the point of view of three women : Aunt Lydia, leader of the Aunts in Gilead, Agnes Jemima, the biological daughter of Offred and her husband Luke from the pre-Gilead days, who was forcibly snatched and adopted into the home of Commander Kyle, and Daisy/Nicole – Offred’s daughter with Nick, whom Offred has managed to smuggle into Canada.
In this book, we learn that Baby Nicole has become a figure of reverence in Gilead, it often making claims against Canada to return her. Baby Nicole, now known as Daisy, and a teenager in Canada has no idea who she is, but has to grow up quickly when her “parents” are murdered by Gilead operatives. Meanwhile, her elder half-sister Agnes, at 13, escapes an arranged marriage to an aging Commander by becoming a Supplicant Aunt with Aunt Lydia’s help. Aunt Lydia of course has her own axe to grind, and brings Agnes and Nicole together to help achieve her goals.
The book’s main protagonist is Aunt Lydia, who in her manuscript (The Ardua Hall Holograph) tells us about the fall of the United States and initial setup of the “Aunt” institution in Gilead, detailing many of the tortures inflicted on herself and other women to make them succumb to Gilead’s draconian rules for women.
You pride yourself on being a realist, I told myself, so face the facts. There’s been a coup, here in the United States, just as in times past in so many other countries. Any forced change of leadership is always followed by a move to crush the opposition. The opposition is led by the educated, so the educated are the first to be eliminated.
From Agnes, we get to hear of her schooling in Gilead as she and her friends, the other Commander’s daughters, are groomed to be dutiful women and obedient future wives. Nicole, almost insouciant by comparison, tells us of life in Canada, and the change in her life, once apprised of her true identity.
The plot of the book revolves around unearthing a Gilead spy who has been sending information to Canada. Also, Mayday is planning to retrieve vital information from this very same spy and use it to expose corruption and Gilead to hasten its downfall. The book alternates between testimonies from the 3 main characters, to give us the complete suspenseful picture.
The Testaments is faster-paced than The Handmaid’s Tale, and fleshes out the protagonist’s characters to let us understand their predicaments, and motivations for doing what they do. While politically-savvy Lydia is the most compelling character, Atwood’s skilled detailing makes Agnes and Nicole’s accounts also very interesting. Aunt Lydia is voiced by Ann Dowd, the actress playing her in the Hulu series, and makes this already great book even better.
Highly recommended.
