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A review by ruth24
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
4.0
To be totally honest, I didn't remember much about The Handmaid's Tale when I began reading this book. I was going to read the synopsis on Wikipedia, but then I started The Testaments anyway and got sucked in and that just never happened. All this to say that I had to play catch-up a bit with this book, trying to remember what happened before and who all the people were. In a way, I read it as a stand-alone book and I enjoyed it that way. I don't always love when authors continue on a story that was better left as it was (ahem, the last chapter of Harry Potter), but this worked for me, probably because it had been a while since I read The Handmaid's Tale.
Reading about Gilead is equal parts terrifying, thrilling and distressing. The way women are treated is sadly not all fictional and it's distressing to read about incidents of sexual assault, female debasement and just their lack of freedom in general. It's terrifying to think of living in a society like this or to draw parallels to incidents or trends in our own, real, world. The cunning lies and secrets are thrilling, especially how things are spun to excuse horrific acts or to convince people of the ideology.
I liked that Atwood told the story from multiple points of view as this gave me a sense of each character and I got to experience various perspectives from both inside and outside the ideology. My favourite was Aunt Lydia, because I enjoyed being conflicted about whether she was a hero or a villain. I liked thinking about what I'd do in her situation and what lengths are reasonable to take as a means to survive or for the greater good.
What I didn't like was some of the dialogue, particularly near the ending between the younger characters. It felt a bit forced/unnatural to me and more sort of YA-ish. I have read some other reviews that have mentioned this, so I don't think I'm alone in thinking that. I kind of liked the ending, but also kind of didn't. I prefer when endings are left to our imagination, but I know a lot of other people actually hate that, so you can't please everyone!
Overall, I enjoyed The Testaments and gave it 4/5 stars. Interested to hear the thoughts of the die-hard Handmaid's Tale fans.
Reading about Gilead is equal parts terrifying, thrilling and distressing. The way women are treated is sadly not all fictional and it's distressing to read about incidents of sexual assault, female debasement and just their lack of freedom in general. It's terrifying to think of living in a society like this or to draw parallels to incidents or trends in our own, real, world. The cunning lies and secrets are thrilling, especially how things are spun to excuse horrific acts or to convince people of the ideology.
I liked that Atwood told the story from multiple points of view as this gave me a sense of each character and I got to experience various perspectives from both inside and outside the ideology. My favourite was Aunt Lydia, because I enjoyed being conflicted about whether she was a hero or a villain. I liked thinking about what I'd do in her situation and what lengths are reasonable to take as a means to survive or for the greater good.
What I didn't like was some of the dialogue, particularly near the ending between the younger characters. It felt a bit forced/unnatural to me and more sort of YA-ish. I have read some other reviews that have mentioned this, so I don't think I'm alone in thinking that. I kind of liked the ending, but also kind of didn't. I prefer when endings are left to our imagination, but I know a lot of other people actually hate that, so you can't please everyone!
Overall, I enjoyed The Testaments and gave it 4/5 stars. Interested to hear the thoughts of the die-hard Handmaid's Tale fans.