{"id":14408,"date":"2020-03-30T18:57:23","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T16:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pocolit.uber.space\/?p=14408"},"modified":"2021-04-01T11:30:08","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T09:30:08","slug":"the-testaments-by-margaret-atwood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/2020\/03\/30\/the-testaments-by-margaret-atwood\/","title":{"rendered":"The Testaments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There was a huge\namount of buzz around the release of Margaret Atwood\u2019s The Testaments <\/em>when it came out in 2019. People queued to get a\nhold of the long-awaited sequel to The\nHandmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>, and it was widely met with approval and accolades,\nculminating it its being awarded a shared Booker Prize (shares with Bernardine\nEvaristo\u2019s Girl, Woman, Other<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems relatively\nclear that Atwood wrote this book in response to the enormous appetite for it\nproduced by the success of its TV adaptation. At the end of The Testaments<\/em>, she notes that one of\nthe most frequently asked questions put to her over the years has been that of\nhow Gilead\u2019s downfall came about; she frames this book as her response to that\nquery. For those unfamiliar with both the earlier book and the show, Gilead is\na country that has seceded from the USA to put in place an authoritarian\ngovernment that seeks to control with particular stringency women and their\nbodies \u2013 more of a hop than a leap of the imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The novel (if it is\nreally a novel) is made up of three narrative strains, each a \u2018testament\u2019 of\nits own. The first is the written account of an Aunt of high position within\nthe Gilead authorities, who will soon enough become familiar to fans. The\nsecond is the oral testimony of a young woman raised in the house of a\nrespected Commander. The third is another oral account given by a girl growing\nup in neighbouring Canada. The book\u2019s artistry lies in its slowly but surely\nbringing these narrative strands towards each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atwood is obviously\nan excellent writer, and The Testaments <\/em>is\na well-executed and well-written response to an audience\u2019s hunger to know more\nabout the world so convincingly produced in both the earlier book and its\nadaptation. Its critique of a crushingly patriarchal system, as well as its\nenvisioning of that system\u2019s eventual vanquishing are compelling, and they\nremain worryingly relevant. On the other hand, it has little of the verve, the\nintellectual excitement, or opacity, of its antecedent. For instance, where an\naddendum at the end of The Handmaid\u2019s\nTale <\/em>has the disquieting effect of destabilising the framework in which the\nreader encounters the bulk of the novel, a similar device at the end of The Testaments <\/em>is shorn of all bristles\nand serves rather to comfort and reassure its audience of a happy ending for nearly\nall. Part of the appeal of the earlier book was that it gave its readers no\nsuch comforting platitudes; this later text is all smooth edges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a good book and a fine read, but at the end one is left wondering whether fans should always get what they ask for. It\u2019s a strikingly unoriginal conclusion for this review to come to, but the sequel just wasn\u2019t as good as the first instalment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Margaret Atwood\u2019s long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid\u2019s Tale was widely met with approval and accolades, culminating it its being awarded a shared Booker Prize.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":14402,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[141,134,98,139],"class_list":["post-14408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-booker-prize","tag-margaret-atwood","tag-review","tag-the-testaments"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14408"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14677,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14408\/revisions\/14677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}