When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead.
With The Testaments, the wait is over.
Margaret Atwood's sequel picks up the story 15 years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.
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[Only dead people are allowed statues, but I have been given one while still alive]***
(Chatto & Windus, 10 September 2019, 419 pages, bought from @AmazonUK)
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I read The Handmaid's Tale at least twenty years ago. I loved it. Over time, my exact memory of events in the book has faded as is common. My love of the book and Atwood in general was revitalised when the TV was launched which has become must-see-TV in my house. I couldn't contain my excitement when The Testaments was announced. I haven't been this excited about a new book since the final book in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series was released. This was well worth waiting for. One of the narrator's is Aunt Lydia. Her character is nothing like the TV series. Aunt Lydia is a monster without mercy or pity on screen, a riveting performance in every scene. In The Testaments Aunt Lydia is human and flawed but far from monstrous. She's my favourite narrator on the book. I can't help wonder if the character on screen will develop in the same way. I'd love to see that. All of the marketing for the book hints that we will find out what happened to June. With less than a hundred pages to do there had been no such revelation. June was mentioned only in passing, as a Handmaid who betrayed Gilead, killed a Commander, took part in Mayday and as the mother of Baby Nicole. I was all set to give the book a slightly lower score than an unnamed female character utters three words revealing this woman was in fact June and I burst into tears. The Testaments is riveting.
