Friday, 17 April 2020

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

I read The Handmaids Tale so many years ago, then listened to it later as an audio book, only on tape. Having done the book twice, shows you how much I enjoyed it. So when Margaret Atwood released the sequel, The Testaments, 34 years later, I had to read it.

When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her--freedom, prison or death.

With The Testaments, the wait is over.

Margaret Atwood's sequel picks up the story more than fifteen years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.

In this brilliant sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalized readers for decades.

"Dear Readers: Everything you've ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we've been living in." --Margaret Atwood.

Having won The Man Booker Prize for fiction, says how great a book this is.

The story takes place 15 years after The Handmaids Tale. It follows the journey of three woman, two who live in Gilead, and one who grew up in Canada, which Gilead people are taught is a vile place with no morals. I found Gilead an oppressive and depressing society where it seems, nobody is happy, but accepting their life as God's will.

Men rule and dominate. Those men, higher in society plot to increase their power and their ability to choose wives. Some woman wish to marry men in powerful positions. Some do not but are forced against their will. Some become 'Aunts' who do not marry but control other woman's lives. They too plot for more power.

Handmaids are servants, slaves really, plus they are fertile woman to be impregnated by Commanders whose wives are unable to bear children. Did I saw it's an oppressive society.

The Testaments is amazing, kept me absorbed and does complete the story started in the Handmaids tale..

http://cdnbookworm.blogspot.com/p/13th-canadian-book-challenge.html

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