“You take the first step, and to save yourself from the consequences, you take the next one. In times like ours, there are only two directions: up or plummet.”
Decisions make up our world, and they bear so much weight that we all struggle with making a choice. Arguably, decisions are in fact easy, it is the consequences that follow them that are the heavy cross to bear. Often we believe we have no choice, for fear of choosing a path. But one day, choice will catch up to us all and we’ll have to make the final one.
“The Testaments” is a book exploring decisions and consequences, and the moment when our choices catch up to us. As one of last year’s most anticipated books, Margaret Atwood delivers a sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale” with a return to Gilead, but with new storytellers. The book is written in three different perspectives; Aunt Lydia, the known villain from the first book and two young girls, Agnes and Daisy. Their story is that of their decisions- Aunt Lydia’s choice of surviving in Gilead and the two young characters’s path to coming to terms with their world. However, Gilead is a dangerous place and the weight of their actions is laced with a far most sinister threat than most.
Aunt Lydia’s ‘testament’ is the highlight of this book, a callback to the style of writing Atwood is known for. The recurring theme that one has to grapple with is whether the misguided actions triggered by pure survival instinct can be absolved, and if yes, by what penance. Aunt Lydia’s story can make one sympathise with her, occasionally root for her, but forgetting who she was portrayed as in “The Handmaid’s Tale” is not easy. The perspectives of Agnes and Lydia are a new and interesting experience, considering how the fabric of Gilead’s society is centered around children. It is also a peek into the life of children who may not remember the violence through which their ‘adoptive’ parents have won them. However, it is evident that these younger voices somewhere set the book up in typical ‘Young-Adult’ fiction trope, a move towards more fast-paced and sensational narration which doesn’t always help the story.
Many readers have been jarred by the YA themes Atwood has used in “The Testaments” and so have we, primarily because it feels like an attempt to smooth over all the edges and fill in all the blanks in “The Handmaid’s Tale”. It was these blanks however, that bore the morbid wonder and fear that made the first book so brilliant, while “The Testaments” seems to be about tying up loose ends. Both of us feel that this book could have been a brilliant chance to flesh out the twistedness of Gilead, considering that “The Handmaid’s Tale” set the perfect background for such a theme. A runaway handmaid who stole a baby would mean twice the oppression of the remaining Handmaids, it would herald persecution of the Aunts as well, for failing to protect the child. All in all, such a theme would build up to the fact that even the chosen class of women, the so-called custodians of Gilead’s beliefs are still subordinate beings in the eyes of an oppressive regime.
“The Testaments” is a page turner unlike its prequel, and Atwood’s trademark imagistic writing imprints itself into one’s mind. It is not however, an exceptional sequel so our advice is, cast your expectations aside for this read.
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