The Testaments

This article is about the 2019 novel by Margaret Atwood. For other uses, see Testament (disambiguation).

The Testaments

Cover of the first edition
Author	Margaret Atwood
Audio read by	Ann Dowd Bryce Dallas Howard Mae Whitman Derek Jacobi Tantoo Cardinal Margaret Atwood
Cover artist	Noma Bar / Dutch Uncle
Language	English
Genre	Science fiction, Dystopian fiction
Publisher	Nan A. Talese / Doubleday
Publication date	September 10, 2019
Publication place	Canada
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	432
ISBN	978-0-385-54378-1
OCLC	1083718198
Dewey Decimal	813.54
LC Class	PR9199.3.A8
Preceded by	The Handmaid's Tale

The Testaments is a 2019 novel by Margaret Atwood. It is a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale (1985). The novel's events occur fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale. The novel is narrated by Aunt Lydia, a character from the previous novel; Agnes, a young woman living in Gilead; and Daisy, a young woman living in Canada.

The novel was joint winner of the 2019 Man Booker Prize, alongside Bernardine Evaristo's novel Girl, Woman, Other. There has only been two other occasions in which this award has been shared.

Plot summary

Lydia starts off as a divorced judge who is imprisoned with other women in a stadium during the establishment of Gilead. After enduring weeks of squalid conditions and solitary confinement in a "thank tank", she and several women, including Elizabeth, Helena and Vidala, are handpicked by Commander Judd to become Aunts, an elite group of women tasked with creating and overseeing the laws and uniforms governing Gilead's women. Aunt Lydia and her fellow Aunts are based at Ardua Hall, the headquarters of the Aunts where they enjoy certain privileges including reading "forbidden" texts including Cardinal John Henry Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua. In secret, Aunt Lydia despises Gilead and is a high-placed mole supplying invaluable intelligence to the Mayday resistance.

Offred's older daughter Agnes grows up in Boston as the adopted daughter of Commander Kyle and Tabitha. Agnes has a loving relationship with her adoptive mother Tabitha, who later dies of ill health. Agnes and her classmates Becka and Shunammite attend an elite preparatory school for the daughters of commanders, where they are taught to run a household but not to read and write. Commander Kyle remarries Paula, the wife of deceased Commander Saunders, who despises Agnes and arranges for Agnes to be married to Commander Judd, a high-ranking Commander. Agnes later learns that she is the daughter of a Handmaid. Agnes manages to escape her arranged marriage by becoming a Supplicant, a prospective Aunt. She joins Becka, who was abused by her dentist father, Dr. Grover.

Meanwhile, Offred's younger daughter Daisy grows up in Toronto's Queen Street West with her adoptive parents, Neil and Melanie, who own a second-hand clothes shop called the Clothes Hound, which is a front for the Mayday organization's underground network to smuggle women out of Gilead. On her sixteenth birthday, Daisy's adoptive parents are murdered by undercover Gilead operatives who also obtain information about Mayday's smuggling operations. Daisy is spirited into hiding by several Mayday operatives including Ada, Elijah, and George, who reveal that she is actually "Baby Nicole", whose return Gilead has been demanding.

Running out of hiding places for Nicole, the Mayday operatives enlist her in a mission to infiltrate Gilead in order to obtain invaluable intelligence from their mysterious mole. Under the guidance of Garth, Nicole poses as a street urchin named "Jade" in order to be recruited by the Pearl Girls, Gilead missionaries who lure foreign women to Gilead with the promise of a better life. Garth's plan works and Nicole is picked up by two Pearl Girls named Aunt Beatrice and Aunt Dove, who bring her to Gilead as a prospective Supplicant.

The disguised Nicole is placed under the care of Agnes and Becka, who are now Supplicants named Aunts Victoria and Immortelle. Aunt Lydia discovers that "Jade" is Nicole and reveals her true identity to Agnes and Becka. Revealing herself as Mayday's mole, Aunt Lydia enlists the three young women in a mission to smuggle incriminating information about Gilead's elite into Canada. Nicole is tasked with carrying the information inside a microdot on her tattoo. Aunt Lydia's plan is for Agnes and Nicole to enter Canada disguised as Pearl Girls with Nicole impersonating Becka. The real Becka is to remain at a retreat disguised as "Jade."

However, Aunt Lydia and the girls are forced to hasten their plans when Commander Judd learns about Nicole's presence and plans to marry her in order to consolidate his political power. Under Aunt Lydia's instructions, Agnes and Nicole travel in a black car to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where they board a boat along the Penobscot River. This boat takes them to a larger vessel called the Nellie J. Banks, owned by Captain Mishimengo, who is tasked with smuggling them to Canada. After reaching Canadian waters, Agnes and Nicole travel on an inflatable to Campobello Island, where they are picked up by the Mayday resistance.

Using the information inside Nicole's microdot, the Canadian media leaks scandalous information about Gilead's elite, which leads to the so-called "Ba'al Purge." The Ba'al Purge cause a military putsch and military revolt that brings about the collapse of Gilead and the subsequent restoration of the United States. Agnes and Nicole are reunited with their mother, Offred. Aunt Lydia later poisons herself as Gilead closes in on her. It is also revealed that Becka died while hiding in a cistern to perpetuate the ruse that "Jade" had run off with a plumber.

The novel concludes with a metafictional epilogue, described as a partial transcript of an international historical association conference. The events of the novel are framed by a lecture read by Professor James Darcy Pieixoto at the 13th Symposium on Gileadean Studies, in 2197. He questions whether Aunt Lydia wrote the Ardua Hall Holograph. He is also curious about the identities of Agnes, Nicole, and their Handmaid mother. Dr Pieixoto previously appeared in a lecture that serves as the epilogue of the Handmaid's Tale.

Characters

Aunt Lydia

The first protagonist Aunt Lydia first appeared as an antagonist in The Handmaid's Tale. She chronicles her life in an illicit manuscript, including details of her life before Gilead, and how she came to be made an Aunt. She also meditates on the inner workings of Gilead's theonomy, its hypocrisy, and endemic corruption. Lydia's manuscript is later published as The Ardua Hall Holograph, also known as "The Testaments", whose provenance is in question. This is an identical response to Offred's recordings of her experience as a handmaid which were published as The Handmaid's Tale. Aunt Lydia is portrayed in The Testaments as a woman who accepts that she must do what is necessary to stay alive, but quietly tries to work within the system to pursue a measure of justice, fairness, and compassion.

Agnes

The second protagonist Agnes is the older daughter of Offred, the protagonist of The Handmaid's Tale. She is adopted by a Gileadean family, who at the start of the novel are preparing her to assume her assigned role as the wife of a commander. Agnes is raised without any knowledge of her true origins.

Nicole

The third protagonist Nicole, also known as Daisy, is the younger daughter of Offred; she is smuggled out of Gilead. She lives in Toronto with her adoptive parents Neil and Melanie, who own a second-hand clothing store called the Clothes Hound. Like Agnes, Nicole is raised without any knowledge of her true origins. She takes an interest in human rights violations in neighboring Gilead.

Reception

Serena Davies of The Daily Telegraph described The Testaments as "a lurid and powerful sequel." She concluded "Atwood has given us a blockbuster of propulsive, almost breathless narrative, stacked with twists and turns worthy of a Gothic novel."

In an interview by Martha Teichner, for CBS News Sunday Morning, Atwood insisted the novel contains "tons of hope— lots and lots of hope" when questioned about the premise. Michiko Kakutani, writing for The New York Times, contrasts Atwood's thesis of writing one's testimony being an "act of hope", against the "the pompous, myopic Gileadean scholars who narrate the satirical epilogues" of both The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments.

Relationship to television series

Atwood wrote The Testaments in coordination with the ongoing The Handmaid's Tale television series, letting the producers know of where she was taking the sequel, affirming certain characters' storylines are not impacted by how they appear in The Testaments, since the setting of the television series is several years away from directly portraying events in this novel. Bruce Miller, producer of the television series, has acknowledged the new novel's storyline will be taken into account as the series continues.

The book was serialised in 15 quarter-hour episodes by BBC Radio 4, released simultaneously with the book.

External links

• The Testaments at LibraryThing
• The Testaments title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database