The Testamants

I meant to blog about this at the time, but completely forgot...

A few weeks ago I read "The Testaments" by Margaret Atwood. I must admint that I approached this one with a significant degree of trepidation - "The Handmaid's Tale" is excellent, but my fear is that it could be another "Go Set a Watchman". That is, a novel that undermines the foundations of the original so thoroughly as to actively lessen it. Further, given that the TV series had become increasingly weaker the further it strayed from the source material, I had become concerned that the more that was revealed about Gilead the more the underlying silliness of the premise would appear.

(It also didn't help that this was a case where the reviews were utterly useless - regardless of what was contained within the covers the reviews were inevitably going to be glowing, and of course it was going to win the Booker Prize. The politics of it all demanded that that be the case, and rendered any judgement rendered useless.)

As it turned out, my fears were almost entirely unfounded. "The Testaments" is a great novel - not a classic of the same calibre of "The Handmaid's Tale", but a worthy companion piece. It's extremely well written, it ties in very well both to the original and the TV series, and although all the big revelations are pretty much immediately obvious, there's still a certain amount of tension to be wrung out of them.

I do have one small issue with the novel, though, and it applies to the TV series also. (And, if I'm honest, to most TV series...) But before I get into that, I should warn you that major spoilers follow. If you don't want to know, best skip the next paragraph...

The issue is this: just because a character is prominent within his or her story, and is the protagonist of the book, TV show, movie, or whatever does not mean that they are particularly significant within the world in which they live. Offred is stronger as some random person who happens to leave behind a journal, the Anne Frank of Gilead, than as some legendary freedom fighter who births the two women who ultimately bring Gilead down. That those two daughters also happen to fall into the orbit of Aunt Lydia, who is here transformed from a largely-unknown villain into the heroic double-agent who provides the explosives is... not the best. By trying to make these characters more, they are ultimately made less.

But I've complained about that before (in the context of Firefly/Serenity) and, ultimately, it's a very minor nit to pick. Other than that, I'm happy to give the novel a glowing recommendation - as I noted, I had had some fears, but they proved entirely unfounded. So that's a win.

#45: "Sharpe's Honour", by Bernard Cornwell