All this makes the new publication a major event. A TV series based on the book was then already in production its 2017 release boosted book sales even more, while the red cloaks and white caps of the Handmaids became symbols of feminist protest. Gilead returned to the public imagination, and “Handmaid” to the bestseller lists, after the 2016 US election and the Women’s March that followed. In the new book Atwood resumes the page-turning pace as she describes a plot by a small group of women, working together, to bring Gilead down. Atwood’s original dystopian novel, published in 1985, ends like a Cold War thriller: the main character, Offred, escapes from Gilead, the Christian theocracy where as a “Handmaid” she is held in reproductive slavery. After giving the intel to Nicole, she takes a fatal dose of morphine before her enemies can find her.For pure reading pleasure ‘The Testaments’, Margaret Atwood’s long-awaited sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” lives up to every bit of the considerable pre-publication hype. Balancing outer piety with manipulation, Aunt Lydia secures leadership of “the women’s sphere,” where she gathers intel that will destroy Gilead. Both girls reunite with their mother at the end of the novel.Īunt Lydia chronicles in her memoir how she became the leader of the Aunts, and how Gilead overthrew the United States. With the help of Mayday’s contact, Aunt Lydia, Nicole infiltrates Gilead as a Pearl Girl, receives information that will destroy Gilead, then smuggles it across the border with the help of her sister, Agnes. The Mayday operatives, an anti-Gilead force, reveal that Daisy is actually Baby Nicole. While in the training facility, Agnes learns that she is Offred’s daughter and participates in a plot to overthrow Gilead.ĭaisy is a teenager in Toronto, Canada, when Angels murder her adoptive parents in a car bombing. Aided by influential adults, Agnes manages to escape marriage and enters training to be an Aunt. Following the death of her adoptive mother, Agnes’s stepmother plots to marry her off when she is barely 13. Gilead upholds its standards using their mercenaries, the Angels, and their spies, the Eyes.Īgnes shares her life story as the privileged daughter of a Commander in Gilead. In this society, women are treated as objects, Handmaids are used as sex slaves to produce children for Commanders, Marthas are servants to the upper-class, Econofamilies are the impoverished lower-class, Pearl Girls are the missionaries of Gilead, and Aunts are the religious leaders of the women’s sphere. Gileadean society continues under the oppressive thumb of the ultra-religious Commanders and Aunts. The Testaments begins 15 years after the conclusion of The Handmaid’s Tale, in which the Handmaid Offred escaped Gilead with her baby, Nicole.

The testaments margaret atwood