Changes

Finally! Almost forty years on, we have a sequel to [[The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood|The Handmaid's Tale]]. I don't want to tell you too much about the plot because it's a novel that is entirely plot driven. Suffice it to say that ''The Testaments'' takes place fifteen years later, fifteen years after Offred gets into a van, not knowing what will happen next. It's told by three narrators: Aunt Lydia, who is secretly writing her memoirs in Ardua Hall; Agnes, a girl brought up in Gilead with the expectation she will marry a commander; Daisy, a rebellious teenage girl in Canada who knows of Gilead only from school lessons and its Pearl Girl missionaries who occasionally call into the store owned by her parents......

Atwood can be a confounding writer. She's not compliant. She doesn't give you what she gave you last time and it doesn't feel at all as though she is concerned about giving you what you want. I love this! ''The Testaments'' is nothing like [[The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood|The Handmaid's Tale]]. It's told by testimony so lacks the immediacy and blindfolded tension of Offred's narrative. We're not peering through a handmaid's winged bonnet at a partial view: we're invited to take those confusing crumbs that Offred gifted us and watch as Aunt Lydia, Agnes and Daisy fill in the gaps - albeit fifteen years later. Little is left to the imagination and, in a strange way, this makes the whole thing much less horrific, even though it is full of bloodthirsty violence and degrading sexual detail. Some reviews I have read are disappointed by this - they wanted more blind alleys to follow and dissect in the Gilead universe. I rather liked it. In ''Testaments'', Atwood has her characters defying men while she herself defies some of its predecessor's most devoted fans.