Margaret Atwood

This isn't a sequel that *needed* to exist, but I can see *why* it exists. It's attempting to build up the world of The Handmaid's Tale beyond The Handmaid's Tale - allowing us to see what Gilead is like for those who aren't Handmaids. So this book gives us 3 perspectives to work with:
Agnes - who's a girl growing up in Gilead, the daughter of a commander dealing with her family life, growing up to marriage age, and her relationships with other people within this strict theocracy
Daisy - a show more girl living in Canada with her parents who sees just how dangerous a place like Gilead is, interacts with Gilead missionaries on a regular basis, but unknowingly has ties to Gilead herself
and surprisingly we get the perspective of Aunt Lidia from the first book, expanding upon her character and making her more than a one-note villain teaching grown women and girls the teachings of Gilead!

I think Aunt Lidia's perspective was the most interesting of all since she's basically playing two distinct parts: trying to play the role of the cruel Aunt Lidia who's the teacher feeding her charges all the teachings and rules of Gilead and how one is to behave in this society, and then there's still the strong woman in her that's stealthily trying to work behind the scenes by way of social manipulation and taking advantage of her status as someone who has power in this society to try dismantling it from the inside.

Agnes's perspective was interesting in the sense that we're seeing how one of the daughters of Gilead is growing up and what girls who don't end up as handmaidens end up going through, which may be familiar and relatable to anyone who's grown up in a strict religious home where a major aspect of the religion is women and girls being pretty, submissive, and married off as soon as possible in order to start making babies. But as a result of that relatability and realism from her perspective, it's really easy to see when plot twists are coming and what major story beats are coming her way.

Daisy is probably the most dry perspective of the three, and like Agnes, it's pretty easy to predict where her story is going, but her story has the most action and espionage? But compared to the original Handmaid's Tale, Daisy's perspective feels like a YA spy thriller - which is totally out of place and doesn't fit at all with the atmosphere or the morbid intrigue of the original Handmaid's Tale or even Aunt Lidia's perspective from this same book! It's a weird juxtaposition. Not necessarily bad? But it feels out of place for The Handmaid's Tale. At worst it could end up feeling like fan fiction, but at best, it's just dry and feels weird to be reading out a teenager trying to dismantle a theocracy from the inside in this story where the world was incredibly well established, incredibly bleak for anyone with a uterus, and seemingly impenetrable from the outside; like Daisy ends up feeling like a means to an end just to get to the ending we only got a few comments on in the "Historical Notes" section at the end of the original Handmaid's Tale.

Do I regret reading The Testaments? No, not really, as it was interesting seeing Gilead from the eyes of someone who isn't a handmaiden. But it's also not required reading either, so if you skip this one, don't beat yourself up over it. show less

Three narratives - powerful Aunt Lydia, writing in secret in Ardua Hall; Agnes, a young woman inside Gilead; and Daisy, a young woman in Canada - turn out to be connected as they work toward bringing Gilead down. Aunt Lydia gives her back story - she was a judge before the U.S. became Gilead - and is the one carefully orchestrating Gilead's downfall behind the scenes. In Canada, Daisy finds out she is the famous Baby Nicole, smuggled out of Gilead as an infant, when the parents she's known, show more Neil and Melanie, are killed by a bomb. Her new caretakers, part of Mayday, get her to agree to return to Gilead, where she will acquire crucial information that she will smuggle back out. (Daisy has a measure of safety, as Gilead wouldn't kill Baby Nicole.) Inside Gilead, Agnes and her friend Becka avoid becoming Wives by becoming Aunts at Ardua Hall, where Lydia begins to give them secret information. Tense, suspenseful, satisfying.

Quotes

Forbidden things are open to the imagination. (Agnes, p. 15)

But perhaps it is too late for that. You take the first step, and to save yourself from the consequences, you take the next one. In times like ours, there are only two directions: up or plummet. (Aunt Lydia, 32)

My life might have been very different. If only I'd looked around me, taken in the wider view....Such regrets are of no practical use. I made choices, and then, having made them, I had fewer choices. (Aunt Lydia, 66)

I've had cause to notice over the course of what you might call my Gilead career that underlings given sudden power frequently become the worst abusers of it. (Aunt Lydia, 68)

...you could believe you were living virtuously and also murder people if you were a fanatic. (Daisy/Baby Nicole, 198)

"She says she's not afraid of dying. It's living she objects to. Under the circumstances." (one of the Aunts, re: Becka, 213)

I am a great proponent of better. In the absence of best. Which is how we live now. (Aunt Lydia, 215)

Where there is an emptiness, the mind will obligingly fill it up. Fear is always at hand to supply any vacancies, as is curiosity. (Agnes, 238)

Innocent men denying their guilt sound exactly like guilty men...Listeners are inclined to believe neither. (Aunt Lydia, 279)

"No one wants to die," said Becka. "But some people don't want to live in any of the ways that are allowed." (294)

Once a story you've regarded as true has turned false, you begin suspecting all stories. (Agnes, 307)

The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it. (Agnes, 307)

Some historians have even argued that persons of that age are especially suitable for such escapades, as the young are idealistic, have an underdeveloped sense of their own mortality, and are afflicted with an exaggerated thirst for justice. (411) show less

Atwood's descriptive graces and encompassing vision of a horrific theocratic patriarchy, although published in 1986 seems prescient today. Without naming Putin and his puppets, or modern Russia with its epidemic of crippled sperm and routinized rape, the Biblical wrath against women which ruthless and insecure males so seamlessly wield, is here woven into an imagined society which had lost the ability to reproduce.

I loved re-reading this private and intimate journal of a woman prized and show more imprisoned as a breeder ruled by rank hypocrisies of weak but deadly males. I recommend this book for everyone, but especially for those who think that a tyrant is a "strong" person. The heroine of this great work of literature is a woman reduced to utter dependence and helplessness, whose character is far stronger than the pretenders who claim to be "strong". show less

The Penelopiad provides Penelope’s version of what happened while her husband, Odysseus, was at war in Troy and beyond, as depicted in The Odyssey and The Iliad. Not knowing if her husband is even still alive, she fends off suitors while hoping for him to return home. Penelope serves as narrator looking back on her life from the perspective of the dead. She is joined by a chorus of maids in a variety of formats – poems, short plays, ballads, and courtroom drama. These are the twelve show more maids that were killed on Odysseus’ orders after he slaughtered the suitors.

Atwood gives voice to the women of the Homeric odes. In both The Iliad and The Odyssey, you know that women serve primarily as accessories to the hero’s quest. Penelope presents a quite different view of the maids than the charge of treachery. In her telling, the maids are innocent victims of rape and had been gathering intelligence from the suitors at Penelope’s request.

Atwood employs her wit and way with words to great effect. She presents Penelope’s view of Odysseus’ adventures, which differ significantly from the original Homeric version. She turns Odysseus’ battle with Cyclops into a fight with a one-eyed tavern keeper over a bill. Odysseus’ encounters with Circe become a stay at an expensive brothel where he was “sponging off the Madam.” It is really quite humorous in places, while still making a point about the double standard and speaking for the women who were given little voice in the originals. I enjoyed it very much and recommend it to those who are already familiar with Homer’s epics. show less