“THE TESTAMENTS” by Margaret Atwood (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 432 pages, $29).
Margaret Atwood wrote her anticipated sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale” in a number of places, like “the dome car of a train stuck on a siding due to a mudslide, on a couple of ships, in a number of hotel rooms, in the middle of a forest.”
That seems appropriate given that “The Testaments,” which begins 15 years after the “Handmaid’s Tale” leaves off, is a wild ride, taking us beyond the walls of the fictional Gilead.
In theocratic Gilead, women are uneducated, illiterate and serve to procreate. This follow-up is a suspenseful page-turner, less bleak than its predecessor, with a nod to spy thrillers. Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale,” published nearly 35 years ago, became even more of a phenomenon when Hulu rolled out the 2017 adaptation. The book became a feminist manifesto – required reading in high school and college classes – not only for many coming of age in the 1980s, but for future generations.
In the last couple of years, red-cloaked women started showing up in government halls, protesting discrimination and challenges to reproductive rights, in the costume of the Handmaids, who were systematically raped in Gilead to give “Commanders” progeny.