If The Handmaid’s Tale is about the rise of Gilead, The Testaments is about its fall, and the fall is nowhere as stunning. The rise of the regime is described in terrifying detail, and Atwood hammers out the details with just enough specificity that the world is fully realized and frighteningly powerful. Gilead is a deeply disturbing dystopian world that feels terrifyingly possible. Atwood builds Gilead masterfully in The Handmaid’s Tale. That being said, it would also be wrong to say that I wasn’t disappointed by The Testaments. I never once worried about finishing on time or had to push myself to keep reading past when I was bored. I raced quickly through the book, and it was no problem whatsoever to finish it in the three days I gave myself before I needed to be ready for discussion. Atwood is a consistantly good writer, and I found myself once again transported to her fictional and horrifying Gilead.
It would be wrong to say I wasn’t pleasantly surprised. So when I hard that there was going to be a sequel to Margaret Atwood’s spectacular Handmaid’s Tale, my reaction was pretty much to nod knowingly at the TV show and mutter, “Cash cow.” To be perfectly honest, I probably wouldn’t have read The Testaments if it hadn’t been for book club, because as good as The Handmaid’s Tale is… there’s a nearly 35-year gap between books, which leads me to believe that if there was supposed to be a sequel, Atwood would’ve written and published it years ago. Like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. That was one of the worst reading experiences of my life, because it wasn’t intended, there was an awkwardly long gap, and the end product simply doesn’t fit in with the existing series. If an author writes a novel they expect to be a one-and-done and then change their mind later, I’m skeptical at best. If a writer goes into a story with the expectation that it will take more than one novel, I’m all in. This is such a great cover! I didn’t notice the second girl for the longest time.Īs a general rule, I’m suspicious of unplanned sequels.
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