The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood is a 2019 novel and is a compelling sequel to the Handmaids Tale. This novel (The Testaments) story takes place a decade and a half later.

The Testaments takes us through three overlapping stories explained by three women describing the events that occurred 15 years after Offred’s final scene.

The three stories are of Baby Nicole (now 16) living in Canada, Agnes who was snatched from her parents Offred and Luke and raised by the regime, and Aunt Lydia, a woman with power, who enforces a new regime and retrains handmaids.

Gilead society (where the novel is picturized) has a fertility crisis which has led to the overthrow of democracy and the rise of patriarchy and oppression. The women are categorized under wives, Handmaids, Marthas, Unwomen, Econowives and aunts. Here fertile women are farmed out to wealthy couples and forced to bear children for them.  Thus, fertility makes the women targets of societal violence and control.

Aunt Lydia brings people together for the purpose of plot and we see her as a survivor, who does everything necessary to avoid death and loss. She rises within the leadership by indulging in cold blooded politics.

The Testaments is a kind of spy thriller where a mole inside Gilead is working with the resistance, to bring down the evil empire. The prose in The Testaments is direct. While Atwood’s story telling is melodramatic, it is also a fast and immense narrative. She focuses on daily life among the privileged classes. Through her narrative we see how experience and stories shape characters.

The use of stories keeps the audience gripped. The novel is intense, and you come across mystery, secret identities, spying, friendships, romance and adventure. The novel gives the reader the hope that justice will prevail

Atwood is through her novel is able to draw parallels between Gilead and the world we live in today.