The Testaments

I liked The Handmaid's Tale. It took its time to deliberate, make us want more and then leave us hanging, holding our breath. Its atmosphere was claustrophobic, its implications were vague enough to let us fill in the rest with our worst nightmares. Gilead was beyond a nightmare. It was my personal inferno.

It worked so effectively in part because it was structured around a single voice, that of Offred's. She couldn't know everything, so we wouldn't have to know everything about Gilead. This made everything feel authentic.

Now that The Testaments is here, and after having read it, I am merely shaking my head as sagely as I can. Part of me dreaded what was coming when the book was announced, but I tried to play down that streak in me that was skeptical. The first season of the TV show was excellent, quite successful in capturing the hopelessness of the book, and it wasn't Atwood's fault the show took a nosedive after that.

There are several reviews that describe The Testaments as either fan fiction or YA literature. Those hit pretty close to home, I think. Since I haven't read anything else from Atwood I can't compare to what her other books might be like, but much of this book felt more like The Hunger Games, and while that book has its place as an entertaining dystopian adventure, it's not a connection I was expecting to make. Yet there it is. On one hand I applaud Atwood for her courage to completely deconstruct the first novel and go in a completely new direction with this latter book, but on the other it's a path taken by so many apparently lesser writers it's somewhat beguiling as to what the point of the book might actually be. And then again it's understandable: there's no point to write a sequel in the spirit of the original, since it stands so well on its own that it would be even harder to justify the sequel's existence.

Since I find the TV show rather banal in how it has morphed into an action-adventure with some shocking social commentary for frills, I'm disappointed yet not altogether surprised to find that The Testaments has followed in its wake. It's predictable, the characters waltz around (and in and out of) Gilead as carefree as ever, and even the occasional sparks of Aunt Lydia's personality can't rescue it from itself.