POP CULTURE BOOKS
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 432 pages)
Boston Bruin’s Fans Meet Dale Arnold
This week, two of our reviewers share different views of one book.
Saturday Nov. 30, 2pm Signed copies are the PERFECT holiday gift for the Bruins fan in your life! Author Dale Arnold, as a longtime broadcaster for the team, has witnessed more than his fair share of that history. Through singular anecdotes only Arnold can tell, as well as conversations with players, this book provides fans with a look into the great moments, the lowlights, and everything in between. Signing copies!
Dale Arnold is not only an NESN Bruins analyst, but also WEEI radio host along side his co-host, Rich Keefe. The two currently host “The Dale & Keefe Show” Monday-Friday. Arnold, also, has been named Best Boston Sports Talk Show Host by Boston Magazine.
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HIPPO | NOVEMBER 21 - 27, 2019 | PAGE 46
A
s soon as the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale (2016) on Hulu wrapped up, I wanted to read the 1985 novel it was based on. The book left me wanting more, as it ended in about the same place as Season 1. With The Testaments we revisit Gilead 15 years later. (Although this book could hold up alone, you’ll get a better experience if you’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale or at least watched the first season.) Not much has changed; commanders rule the roost, fertility issues are widespread, Marthas tend to housework while Aunts educate young women about their place in the world, preparing them for arranged marriages. Handmaids remain vital to the society, but they take a backseat here. There are two new narrators — Agnes, a young woman from a wealthy family living in Gilead, and Daisy, a young woman living a life of apparent freedoms in Canada — and a familiar third one, Aunt Lydia. If the mere mention of Aunt Lydia in The Handmaid’s Tale drove fear into your heart, you likely won’t feel the same way about her in The Testaments. Her voice comes to us through a diary of sorts — she has been documenting life in Gilead for years, it turns out. We are given a deeper look into her pre-Gilead life and her rise to power as one of the “founding aunts,” and we find she is more complex than meets the eye. If there can be any quick take-away from The Testaments, it is simply that — people are complex, and even those living in monstrous societies aren’t necessarily monsters. Citizens of Gilead, the imposing figure of Aunt Lydia included, are at the mercy of a power much larger than themselves. Even Daisy in Canada, who seems to have access to everything a free society has to offer, finds herself kept in the dark about many aspects of her life, and Canada has not entirely escaped Gilead’s tentacles — missionaries called “Pearl Girls” wander the streets looking to bring new faces back to Gilead. The Testaments is about survival in an unjust society: What will you do to survive? I often take issue with the pacing of novels, but I found The Testaments as engaging as The Handmaid’s Tale. I recommend picking up a physical copy. It’s full of quotable gems, from Aunt Lydia in particular, that you may find yourself wanting to reference or at re-read later on. A- — Alison Downs
A
longstanding criticism of dystopian literature is that it’s only considered such if the harsh realities of people of color start to affect white people too. Since Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985 readers have wondered how its Gilead regime might have fallen and what fate befell people of color during its fascist theocracy. The oppressive practices of Gilead are infamously based on real examples from history, yet Atwood neglects to reflect on how the policing of women’s bodies has been overwhelmingly aimed at women of color throughout American history. Even after the television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale clumsily tried to un-whitewash the cast of characters, when Atwood chose to revisit Gilead in The Testaments she again focused on the struggles of white cis women. While The Handmaid’s Tale shows the birth of a fascist regime, The Testaments shows the roots of its downfall. Because Caucasian women are the only ones allowed in Gilead, they are the ones left to be the heroes of the story. (Non-white women were transported to the “colonies,” which could have been a euphemism for genocide; little is said about it in the original book and nothing further in this sequel.) Atwood builds tension gracefully throughout the novel; clues about each narrator’s past are laid out carefully. As soon as you discover where one trail leads, you have anxiously sniffed out the next one to uncover. The craft is not the fault I have with this novel. Readers quickly discover that the Aunt whose handwritten account comprises one of The Testaments’ three alternating narratives is Aunt Lydia, who in The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the villains we see gleefully indoctrinating Offred and other women to the new rules of Gilead through torture. The existence of the Aunts shows how some people will seize power however they can, even if it means siding with the oppressor; in The Testaments we see exactly how Aunt Lydia falls into that path. While this provides more depth into her character, it is perplexing why Atwood wanted to make an anti-hero out of Aunt Lydia. Her decisions are necessary for her own survival, but they lead directly to the murder and rape of other women, which does not make for a sympathetic protagonist. I won’t deny that it’s thrilling to see how the narratives thread together, but everything ties up perhaps a little too neatly. American society still needs to reckon with its past of enslaving and sterilizing women of color. They are the heroes leading the revolution, and only in fiction could you pretend otherwise. C — Katherine Ouellette