The Testaments

Margaret Atwood

Penguin Random House

Otago Daily Times, 2019

Of the many books I have read over the years, two stand out in my memory because of the impact they made on me at both a personal and political level: 1984 and  A Handmaid’s Tale. Among the many commonalities between these stories, not least their apparent prescience in light of recent events, is their refusal to come to a tidy conclusion, leaving it up to the reader to complete the story for themselves. Any author brave enough to write a sequel to such a book runs a very real risk of disappointing some, if not all, of their audience because it is sure to diverge from that of the reader. In the case of The Handmaid’s Tale, this problem has been partially alleviated by the television series, which extends the story well beyond the end of the novel. Despite this, people have continued to ask Atwood how Gilead eventually falls. In The Testaments she answers that question in a manner every bit as memorable as her original masterpiece.

The novel takes the form of three historical documents presented at the Thirteenth Symposium on Gileadian Studies. Two of these are transcripts from two young women, one raised in Gilead, the other smuggled out of the country shortly after birth and returns as an agent of Mayday to bring the regime down. At first, there is little to distinguish their two voices other than circumstance, and even when their storylines eventually converge, the differences between them come from their external impressions of one another rather than in character. There are, as it transpires, good reasons for this. It also means their testimonies (as Offred’s before them) represent a generation, and their relative objectiveness allows the world behind their personal experiences to remain visible.

The story’s third and most disturbing strand is told from Aunt Lydia’s perspective. These sections, detailing her decades-long campaign to destroy Gilead from within, are all the more disturbing for being haunted by the formidable face of Anne Dowd (who plays her in the television series), take the form of a letter addressed directly to the reader. These provide selected glimpses of her past seasoned with judicial admissions of wrongdoing, acts of kindness and expressions of regret. She acknowledges her actions are expedient or self-interested but frames any personal benefit as secondary to or necessary for advancing her longer game. Even a momentary wavering of commitment is designed to highlight the peril she faces for the greater good. Walking an uneasy line between confession and self-justification, her narrative not only provides the foundation for the novel as a whole but, by taking us into her confidence, she makes us complicit in her actions (you yourself would never have done such things! But you yourself will never have to). Thus, she leaves us no choice but to empathise with her, an act of manipulation that reveals as much about how she has reached and maintained her position of power as the history she relates.

Atwood’s mastery is as evident as form as content. The interleaved accounts become shorter and more urgent as what they recount comes closer to the narrative present, and events build to a climax. Even the images on the cover and prefacing each woman’s account take different forms depending on perspective. Atwood also works with and around the television series in such a way that it will satisfy readers regardless of whether they have watched it or not.

My one reservation about this novel applies just as much to its predecessor: the decision to append notes that make Gilead’s eventual demise explicit.  This is a minor quibble, however, and, in so far as Atwood’s writing is a call to arms, an understandable choice. People are unlikely to engage in battles they cannot imagine winning, and, among many other things, The Testaments is intended to remind us that totalitarianism can and will eventually fall.