The Testaments by Margaret Atwood is the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, much anticipated (possibly demanded) by fans of the TV series based on Ms. Atwood’s book. By the end of The Handmaid’s Tale we know that there is a resistance movement. It is modeled on the real and desperate escape route for American slaves, the Underground Railroad. This time it is called the “Female Road” and the magic rescue word offered to handmaid’s, who are virtually sex slaves, is May Day. Offred escapes Gilead through this underground route. But what happens after she escapes? Does she die? Does she find a safe place and live out her days in peace? Does she join the resistance?
Margaret Atwood is able to use her words to build scenes from both the past and the future that are vivid and that come to life in our minds. She builds the entire nation of Gilead. She does it like one of those artists who can capture the essence of a person or a place with just a few deft strokes. We find we don’t need every little detail. Because her new nation is similar to things we already know our mind fills in the blanks. The same skill is at work as we follow the resistance movement inside and outside of Gilead, and as a very surprising character engineers the demise of Gilead.
Gilead has besides the handmaids; the Commanders, their wives, the Marthas, the Econowives, the Aunts, the Guardians, and the Eyes. The Aunts are modelled somewhat on nuns. They live regimented lives, ruled by prayers and bells, they are the teachers of handmaids and of the daughters of Commanders, they are the only women in Gilead allowed to keep books and to read and write. Big mistake. In this male-dominated world men believe that women are now powerless, completely reliant on men, and that even the powers of previously educated, professional women such as doctors, lawyers, and judges have been completely defused. In The Testaments we find Commander Judd and Aunt Lydia basically in a respectful/hostile power struggle. Aunt Lydia was a force in The Handmaid’s Tale, but in The Testaments we learn about her secret powers (no magic is involved, just intellect). We learn that what Commander Judd cannot imagine will eventually bring him down.
We also meet a young teen who is living with a couple of resistance fighters who she almost believes are her real parents. We meet the Pearl Girls, missionaries from Gilead who are also unwitting partners in the resistance. When Gilead uncovers “Nicole’s” parents and blows them up Nicole (Baby Nicole was stolen from Gilead) is hurriedly trained to infiltrate Gilead as a captive of the Pearl Girls. Watching her reactions as she is introduced to this repressed culture and watching the reactions of the others to her is part of that charming skill that Margaret Atwood brings to her writing. Atwood successfully, but not exhaustively, wraps up the tale of the handmaids and offers us a new hero, a woman, of course.
As it had been many years since I read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, I wanted to read it again before I read her new sequel, The Testaments. The Handmaid’s Tale was written in times when women’s reproductive rights were a hot topic, although not at the height of the women’s consciousness movement. The birth control pill was greeted by women with relief and sighs for the freedom it gave women to avoid unwanted pregnancies. It also seemed to offer women the same sexual freedom that men exercised, although that freedom proved to be somewhat more illusory than women thought for a number of reasons, some having to do with the fact that we still live in a male-dominated society, some having to do with sexually transmitted diseases, and some having to do with social disapproval and the need to maintain a “good” reputation. The pill was greeted very differently by the church, especially the Catholic Church and the Pope. In 1973 the Supreme Court allowed for legal abortions in the United States in the now famous/infamous Roe v Wade decision and the reactions of women and the church were pretty much a repeat of the reactions to the birth control pill. I know – all this history – what a way to make a really good story really boring. The actual history is important, however, to any deep understanding of this very original tale. These women’s rights were always controversial although The Handmaid’s Tale was written in 1985, when these new rights for women were less startling.
I like science fiction and The Handmaid’s Tale is, in a way science fiction and it is certainly dystopian. It predicts a time in near-future America when men of religious faith decide that the new freedoms for women are not what God intended. Women are not meant to be equal to men. They are meant to be wives and mothers and submissive to their husbands. These men stage a revolution against the United States of America. They manage to kill the president, scatter Congress and nullify the US Constitution. They win enough territory in the middle of America and most southern states, except Maine, California, Florida and Texas, to form a new nation, the nation of Gilead.
Offred is a handmaid in the new nation of Gilead. She used to be a free American woman who was having an affair with Luke, a married man, who later divorced his first wife and married her (I tried to find her original name but did not find it). They had two children. Venereal disease and a viral weapon against mumps had rendered many men sterile and women often had problems conceiving or delivering healthy offspring. Population was declining. Women who had borne healthy babies were very desirable to the new nation of Gilead. They would suspend women’s ID cards and credit cards and make them unemployable and then they would kidnap them and reeducate them to be Handmaids in Gilead. It is not easy to turn a woman who has experienced freedom into what is basically a sex slave in a distinctive red habit hemmed in by about a million rules and almost as many Eyes (spies). Offred is not a happy camper.
Of course you may have watched the TV series which I have not seen yet, but you really ought to read the book. It’s a classic. Choosing a name that would have fit right into Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was not an accident. Here we are, almost 50 years after the Supreme Court made it legal to have an abortion, woman’s choice, and we still find concerted efforts, trickier but less militant, to overturn women’s rights to make important decisions about their own reproduction. We find many states passing laws that force clinics to comply with regulations that large hospitals can barely afford to comply with and when the clinics cannot meet the new requirements the clinics must close (TRAP laws), We find Evangelical churches that argue that even contraception is against God’s law. Federal courts are being stuffed with Conservative judges using as bait the overturning of Roe v Wade, and now marriage freedom. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood has never been more relevant.
I have a recurring dream. I am escorted to a well-appointed studio apartment with all the new books for the month piled on every available surface. I am given a key, a valet robot who can cook and clean, and an AI virtual presence to handle my business and social interactions. I can read as long as I like but I can’t take any books out of the apartment and if I leave I can’t come back in. Am I obsessed? Actually this is a dream that could turn into a nightmare. However if you could take books out into the world with you and if you could come and go as you please, it might just be perfect.
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Literature and Fiction
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern F*
This is Pleasure: A Story by Mary Gaitskill F
On Swift Horses: A Novel by Shannon Pufahl F
Girl, Woman, other: A Novel by Berndine Evaristo F*
The Innocents: A Novel by Michael Crummay F
Find Me: A Novel by André Aciman F
The Revisioners: A Novel by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton F
The Confession Club: A Novel (Mason) by Elizabeth Berg F*
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson F*
Mary Toft: or The Rabbit Queen: A Novel by Dexter Pullman F*
Mysteries and Thrillers
The Lost Causes of Beale Creek: A Novel by Rhett McLaughlin, Link Neal
Broken Glass (A Nik Pohl Thriller) by Alexander Hartung and Fiona Beaton
A Christmas Gathering by Anne Perry
Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens
The Family Upstairs: A Novel by Lisa Jewell
Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry: A Novel by Mary Higgins Clark
The Siberian Dilemma 9 (The Arkady Renko Novels) by Martin Cruz Smith
An Equal Justice (David Adams) by Chad Zunker
A Minute to Midnight by David Baldacci
36 Righteous Men by Steven Pressfield
Nonfiction
Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy by Donald L Miller
Valley Forge by Bob Drury and Tom Clavin
Acid for the Children: A Memoir by Flea, Patti Smith *
When the Earth Had Two Moons: Cannibal Planets, Icy Giants, Dirty Comets, Dreadful Orbits, and the Origins of the Night Sky by Erik Asphang
Our Wild Calling: How Connecting with Animals can Transform our Lives and Save Theirs by Richard Louv
The Beautiful Ones by Prince
Hymns of the Republic: The Story of the Final Years of the American Civil War by S. C. Gwynne
Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, the Berlin Wall and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Iain McGregor *
Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation by Michael Powell
The Great Pretender – The Undercover Mission that Changed our Understanding of Madness by Susannah Cahalan *
The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West
User Unfriendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design are Changing the Way We Live, Work and Play by Cliff Kuang with Robert Fabricant
Why Are We Yelling: The Art of Productive Disagreement by Buster Benson
Don’t Be Evil: How Big Tech Betrayed its Founding Principles – and all of us by Rana Foroohar
Volume Central: Hearing in a Deafening World by David Owen.
Science Fiction and Fantasy
The Deep by Rivers Solomon and Daveed Diggs
The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North
Call Down the Hawk (The Dreamer Trilogy, Bk. 1 by Maggie Stiefvater
Star Wars – Resistance Reborn: The Rise of Skywalker by Rebecca Roanhorse
Made Things by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Fate of the Fallen (Shroud of Prophecy) by Kel Kade
New York Times Book Update
Oct. 4 th
The Topeka School by Ben Lerner F
Sarah Jane by James Sallis – Crime
Bloody Genius by John Sanford – Crime
Gallows Court by Martin Edwards – Crime
The Bird Boys by Lisa Sandlin – Crime
Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis F
Akin by Emma Donoghue *
Growing Things by Paul Tremblay – Short stories – Horror
The Cabin at the End of the Lane by Paul Tremblay – Horror
Sealed by Naomi Booth – Horror
Nonfiction
Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion by Tom Segev
What was Liberalism? The Past, Present, and Promise of a Noble Idea by James Traub
The Stakes – 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy by Robert Kuttner
The Accusation by Edward Berenson
Scarred by Sarah Edmondson – Nxivm
Super Pumped by Mike Isaac (Uber)
The Anarchy by William Dalrymple
Oct. 11 th
Fiction
The Shadow King by Namwali Serpell
The Sweetest Fruits by Moneque Truong
A Pure Heart by Rajia Hassib
The World that We Knew by Alice Hoffman
A Man in Love by Martin Walser (Göethe)
The Shortlist – Love and War in European Fiction
Country by Michael Hughes
Will and Testament by Vigdis Hjorth
The Girl at the Door by Veronica Raimo
Nonfiction
Transaction Man by Nicholas Lemann
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
The Second Founding by Eric Foner
Beaten Down, Worked Up by Steven Greenhouse
Homesick by Jennifer Croft (Memoir)
Fashionopolis by Dana Thomas
We are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer
Syria Secret Library by Mike Thompson
A Polar Affair by Lloyd Spencer Davis (promiscuous penguins)
New York Times does Halloween but I don’t.
Nov. 1 st
The Old Success by Martha Grimes – Crime
Death in Focus by Anne Perry – Crime
Elevator Pitch by Linwood Barclay – Crime
The Quaker by Liam McIlvanney – Crime
Grand Union by Zadie Smith – Short Stories
The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott
Fiction
Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout
Girl by Edna O’Brien
Call Upon the Water by Stella Tillyard
Lampedusa by Steven Price
Nonfiction
Edison by Edmund Morris – Bio.
To Build a Better World by Condoleezza Rice and Philip Zelikow
Sontag by Benjamin Moser – Bio.
Who is an Evangelical? by Thomas S. Kidd
The Immoral Majesty by Ben Howe
The Problem with Everything by Meghan Daum
The Economist’s Hour by Binyamin Appelbaum
The Marginal Revolutionaries by Janek Wasserman
The Shortlist – 3 Memoirs by Famous Women
Inside Out by Demi Moore
Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years by Julie Andrews with Emma Walton Hamilton
Touched by the Sun: My Friendship with Jackie by Carly Simon
Publisher’s Weekly
Oct. 7 th
Salt Show by Julia Armfield
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir by Nikki Grimes
Older Brother by Mahir Guven, trans. from French by Tina Kover Europa
American Radicals: How Nineteenth Century Protest Shaped the Nation by Holly Jackson
How We Fight For Our Lives: A Memoir by Saeed Jones
Passing: A Memoir of Love and Death by Michael Korda
Anti-Social: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation by Andrew Marantz
Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts by Kate Racculia
Cosmosknights: Book One by Hannah Templer
Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame by Erin Williams
Oct. 14
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi trans. from Arabic by Marilyn Booth (Oman) F
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me by Adrienne Brodeur
The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson NF
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha F – based on true case
Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA by Amaryllis Fox Memoir
Music: A Subversive History by Ted Gioia History
One Hundred Autobiographies: A Memoir by David Lehman Memoir
The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols: Adapted from the Journals of John H. Watson, MD by Nicholas Meyer F
The First Cell: And the Human Cost of Pursuing Cancer to the Last by Azra Razer NF
Salvaged by Madeleine Roux Science Fiction Thriller
It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo trans. from Spanish by Elizabeth Bryer (Caracas, Venezuela) F
Olive Again by Elizabeth Strout
Oct. 21
All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg F *
The Peanut Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the Gang, and the Meaning of Life – Edited by Andrew Blauner (Essays, Poems, Cartoons) (Valentines to Charles M. Schultz)
The Night Fire by Michael Connelly F
The Deserter by Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille Thriller *
Initiated: Memory of a Witch by Amanda Yates Memoir
Janis: Her Life and Music by Holly George-Warren Biography *
The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell Thriller
Edison by Edmund Morris Biography
The Promise by Silvina Ocampo trans. from Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine and Jessica Powell F
The Fragility of Bodies by Sergio Olguin, trans. from Spanish by Miranda France, Bitter Lemon Crime
The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys (Franco, Madrid) F
Famous in Cedarville by Erica Wright F
Oct. 28
Blue Moon: A Jack Reacher Novel by Lee Child F
The Lives of Lucien Freud: The Restless Years, 1922-1968 by William Feaver Biography
Overview: A New Perspective of Earth by Benjamin Grant Photos
Blood: A Memoir by Allison Moorer Memoir
Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right by Anne Nelson NF*
The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada, trans from Japanese by David Boyd F
The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna by Mira Ptacin NF
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (humor) F
Nov. 4
The Movie Musical! by Jeanine Bassinger NF
The History of Philosophy by A. C. Grayling NF
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert (“a contemporary page-turning winner”) F
In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Mava Machado (same sex domestic abuse) Memoir
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern F
The Book of Lost Saints by Daniel Jose Older F
The Arab of the Future 4: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1987-1992 by Riad Sattouf, trans. from Frenchy by Sam Taylor Autobiography *
The Siberian Dilemma by Martin Cruz Smith (Arkady Renko #9) by Thriller
Love Unknown: The Life and Worlds of Elizabeth Bishop by Thomas Travisano Biography and Literary Study
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett is a study of a family, an American family. It is a story told by the second child, a boy named Danny. It’s a story about a clueless father and husband who buys his wife a house, a famous house, built with much attention to detail by a wealthy family, the VanHoebeeks,. The ceiling in the dining room is a work of art, literally. The house has a ballroom and a conservatory. Since the sale was an estate sale, all the VanHoebeek’s belongings are still in the house, including portraits of husband and wife over the mantle in the drawing room. Despite all the architectural glories the house has a very small kitchen because the staff would use it, not the family. There is also a pool.
Into this ritzy house Cyril Conroy brings his wife. He bought the house for her as a surprise. At the time they had one child, their daughter Maeve. The house was a source of pride for the husband who was a real estate investor and property manager. But his wife, was appalled by the expensive details. She yearned to dedicate her life to helping the poor. Clive found Elna just as she was preparing to enter a convent, not yet a nun. He whisked her away and married her. We often see our partners in life through cloudy mirrors. We make assumptions that if they love us they must be like us. The Dutch House is a story about misplaced love and misunderstood love. Maeve shoulders all the responsibilities of these selfish parents when the family falls apart. Some people should never have children. She yearns for what they lost, the family and the house and the hired women who took care of them, Fluffy, Sandy, and Jocelyn. Maeve is obsessed and cannot move on with her own life.
Although this is a story of a family, and of loss and reunion, even more it is a story of a house. If you have ever given a home and your heart to cats you know that some cats fall in love with people, but some cats fall in love with houses. How do Maeve and her brother lose The Dutch House and then get it back? Although nothing earthshaking happens, there are plenty of repercussions. What stories are more interesting than stories about families? Take your pick, but I will usually enjoy a good family saga by any writer as skilled as Ann Patchett. This book will probably be made into a movie, but doesn’t even have to be made into a movie because it already creates one in your mind.
So Many Books, Choose Wisely 