Atwood's Sequel to "The Handmaid's Tale"

To preface my thoughts on this novel, I have always really wanted to be a fan of Margaret Atwood’s writing, but it is dense and hard to slough through. I’ve read quite a few of her novels, including The Handmaid’s Tale and Surfacing. I have always found her writing style to be very intellectual, but difficult for the average reader to engage with. The prose is wandering and lengthy, and at times, convoluted. Even with higher education degrees in English and literature, I always found myself having a hard time with Atwood’s prose.

The Testaments is completely different. The prose is a different style. Out of the three narrators, Aunt Lydia’s narration comes the closest to Atwood’s writing style that I’m familiar with. However, it still isn’t the same. The other two narrators are young women and their voices are so authentic and not overly written at all, as I’ve felt some other characters and the prose have been in her past novels. This novel feels as if Atwood knew her market was a popular fiction audience. By this, I mean that an easier prose style to comprehend and suspense techniques are executed in this novel to the degree of a New York Times Bestseller that everyone and their mother reads. I am not knocking this at all - quite the opposite, actually. This is my favorite Margaret Atwood novel to date because of the stylistic changes.

The novel follows three female narrators: one is a high-powered Aunt in Gilead, one is a young woman that has lived in Gilead her whole life, and the other is a young woman who lives outside Gilead, protesting the structures inside. The novel switches perspectives between the three and eventually intertwines them together in the end, revealing to us how Gilead fell. Atwood states in interviews that the reason she wrote this novel was to answer the two questions she heard the most: “What happens to Offred?” and “How does Gilead end?” Atwood does a stellar job of answering both of these questions, although one more directly than the other.

So many techniques of suspense were used expertly that kept me engaged with the novel. There are no twists and any sections where there is a “revelation” always involves a concept that Atwood heavily alluded to in the previous chapters. This doesn’t take away from the beauty of the novel. The reader knows what may be coming “twist”-wise, but this novel isn’t a thriller. It is one about the complexity of emotion and character and personality as it interacts with a corrupt regime hell bent on silencing and suppressing women. The beauty of the novel lies in watching how the narrators navigate their world and how we, in our present-day situation, can keep it from happening. Some of the details that Atwood includes about characters describing how they saw small warning signs and barely escaped just before Gilead was founded felt congruent to what we are experiencing in this current administration.

This novel is nuanced and nearly perfect. I can now become the Atwood fan that I’ve always wanted to be. I think this is her best novel for a general audience and I really hope she continues writing like this. While I love “intellectual” writing and novels, it isn’t for everyone and it isn’t – most of the time – a fun read. It feels like “whew” upon finishing rather than “wow.” I want to always feel “wow,” not like I finally finished a difficult race. I want to be compelled to read the story, just as I felt with The Testaments.