Atwood, The Testaments (Kindle ed., 2019)

More than once, I have pointed to Ms. Atwood’s other volume, The Handmaid’s Tale, as a master (mistress?) piece. There are two reasons why I consider it so. First, the imaginary world which Ms. Atwood has created and to which the book introduces us is largely self-consistent and free of contradictions. Not, as I know from my own experience while trying to design a hell in which Hitler could write his memoirs, something that is easy to achieve. Second, it is plausible. Not in the sense that one expects every detail to become true; but in that it makes one think that something of the kind is possible and might indeed come about. For both of these qualities, hats of.

The plot of The Testaments is as follows. We are re-introduced to Lydia, a top-ranking Aunt known from The Handmaids’ Tale. With headquarters at Ardua Hall, she is in charge of all other Aunts and, through them, of Giladean—meaning, future American—womanhood in general. Top woman, so to speak, to the point where the regime has even erected a statue in her honor. We learn about the methods the ruling Sons of Jacob use to put women into their proper place; including mass arrests, torture, and forcing some women to execute others in public. All this, to prepare the way for a regime that prohibits women from working, owning bank accounts, and, in a great many cases, learning to read and write. Or indeed, since each of them is assigned a male guardian, from doing anything on their own at all.
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Lydia, though, is not what she seems. Outwardly she does what her male superiors (“Commanders.” as they are collectively known) expect her to. In secret, though, she is enlisting her young female subordinates to resist. The two most important ones are Agnes and Daisy. Agnes, a Bostonian, has lost first her real mother and then her first stepmother to the regime’s orders. When her second stepmother wants to marry her off to a Commander much older than herself, she revolts. Daisy’s real name is Nicole. Her mother, a handmaid, refused to give her up to the Commander by whom, much against her will, she had been impregnated; instead she smuggled her into Canada when she was still a baby. The Giladean government demands that Canada return “Baby Nicole,” turning her into a cause célèbre. Meanwhile Daisy herself, unaware of who she really is, lives in Toronto with a sympathetic Canadian couple, Neil and Melanie. They are members of Mayday, an organization dedicated to opposing the Giladean regime much as the Underground Railway once did the slave-holding American South. Neil and Melanie are assassinated by Giladean agents, whereupon she learns her true identity and flees south. After which she too joins Lydia and Mayday.

In the end Lydia, Agnes, Daisy and various secondary characters succeed in igniting a revolution that overthrows the Sons of Jacob—how could it be otherwise? In my view, there are two things wrong with this story. First, much of it reads like any thriller: the good guys, the bad guys, the guns, the escapes, the pursuits, the last-moment rescues, etc. A bit banal, I would say, given the ubiquity of similar tales from the book of Exodus down. Second, there is nothing particularly feminine about it. True, Ms. Atwood does see women’s nature as special. While not as strong as men, physically, she says they are better than men at sensing each other’s emotions, forming groups, and talking openly to each other. All the while maintaining solidarity and secrecy in the face of those big, brutish, and insensitive creatures, men. What is left unexplained is just how a woman-organized plot differs from one that is run by men. Or else, what is the point?

To sum up: Ms. Atwood knows how to spin a tale, how to keep suspense, and simply how to write. The outcome is a good book. But, as so often happens, not quite as good and, above all, not quite as original as the one to which it forms the sequel.