Not to be confused with art books


Anyway, after that rib splitting comment,

I'm really not enjoying 'The Testaments'. I was afraid this would happen as soon as she won the Booker Prize. I'd seen her speak - and there was so much I wanted to know, and still look forward to seeing.

Chiefly, the trial (and defence) of Aunt Lydia - and how a justice system following on from a death penalty state punishes a perpetrator who both should be and shouldn't be executed (as we slide up and down our own internal moral spectrum). I think that's a fascinating and socially relevant hinge point of how we process rehabilitation and set it against the desire for vengeance.

Secondary to that, because Lydia is so compelling, is the ability of the victims specifically and society generally to cope with that level of mass trauma. Emotionally, psychologically, politically. Where do you go after that?

THT is brilliant - it throws up so many serious questions about our ethics, our hopes, the banality of our worst (I think we've all had teachers (or police, or social workers, or bosses, or benefits officers, or priests or anyone with a little power) like Aunt Lydia - of her ilk.

Mainly but not exclusively the power of THT is questions and concerns around women. How we deal with men is related, bigger question - because I think we traumatize them by negating or sculpting their emotions, disregarding their history of being disposable - and then being surprised that their rates of violent offending, suicide, you name it, is sky high.

I think I first saw the film one night when I was about to go to bed - 1993, somewhere around there, and found it compelling. Having spent my childhood wishing to grow up to be Alexis Carrington, it was the first time I really identified with the weaker characters of a narrative.

I read the book itself a year or two later, one rainy afternoon in a public library - when I was supposed to be doing research for a school project of cholera victims within the territory of the Metropolitan Board of Works.

I was enveloped by series 1, repelled by the gratuitous violence of series 2, and felt something of a reward for sticking through series 3.

But 'The Testaments' - I'm just not getting it. I'm up to p.117 and it's been a slog. Atwood could've phoned this in. It gives the impression of exactly that, and I'm disappointed.

I'll stick with it.

Have others read The Testaments and if so, what was your take?

In 2007 was it? I can't quite recall. Almost everyone I discussed this with (maternal family aside) expressed horror at me for saying I had been upset to see Saadam Hussein executed and I couldn't see it as a compassionate beginning to whatever was coming next.

I had travelled in Iraq myself in 2000, staying with Marsh Arabs (I believe now largely gone), Kurds, and in Baghdad itself. I'm really not saying it was a utopia, but it wasn't the festering mess it was always going to become with that kind of intervention.

Only a lady I met at Walter Steiger on Sloane Street was as upset as I was by it, and we cemented what became a very deep friendship over the fab boots she was buying (to cheer herself up after seeing the hanging on the news), and the long meal with many drinks we ended up having.

How do you punish/rehabilitate or give compassion/unleash well earned vengeance on The Trumps, Bolsanoro, Erdogan and Duterte, Modi, the House of Saud, Brexiters, The Netanyahu family, the oligarchy in Russia, etc - Gilead is our only way to examine this without harming existing societies.

I fear so much harm is being done, so willfully, with such gleeful ignorance that we'll still be stuck on this in our nursing homes - if we haven't been wiped out meantime.

I've read a review of The Testaments and was intrigued by the account of how Aunt Lydia came to be who she is. One of the other stories sounded interesting too, about how Gilead is actually recruiting women from Canada.

I've read 9 Margaret Atwood novels...



The Edible Woman
Surfacing
Lady Oracle
Cat's Eye
The Robber Bride
Alias Grace
The Blind Assassin
The Year of the Flood
Hag-Seed

...and, the eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed, the Handmaid's Tale wasn't one of them.

The Blind Assassin and Cat's Eye were the best.

Fangirl Three wrote:

I've read a review of The Testaments and was intrigued by the account of how Aunt Lydia came to be who she is. One of the other stories sounded interesting too, about how Gilead is actually recruiting women from Canada.

Yes, the 'Pearl Girl' missionaries are an interesting addition. Maybe this lack of enjoyment is all just my fault - I admit I was hoping it would largely be the internal workings of Aunt Lydia.

Nightjar wrote:

I've read 9 Margaret Atwood novels...



The Edible Woman
Surfacing
Lady Oracle
Cat's Eye
The Robber Bride
Alias Grace
The Blind Assassin
The Year of the Flood
Hag-Seed

...and, the eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed, the Handmaid's Tale wasn't one of them.

The Blind Assassin and Cat's Eye were the best.

Is there a special reason you've stayed away from it for all these decades?

cosmictanya wrote:

Fangirl Three wrote:

I've read a review of The Testaments and was intrigued by the account of how Aunt Lydia came to be who she is. One of the other stories sounded interesting too, about how Gilead is actually recruiting women from Canada.

Yes, the 'Pearl Girl' missionaries are an interesting addition.

Quote :

they are masters of recruiting vulnerable teenage girls, such as promising atheistic girls that they will liberate the women of Gilead

That's devilishly clever.

SPOILERS!!

More (semi) spoilers...

Not sure how I feel about it now I've finished. Satisfactory rather than thrilling. I think what I've been left with is what I'd hoped for - a more thorough understanding of Lydia, and something I wasn't sure I wanted - some kind of redemption for her. Maybe also an uneasy admiration of how someone with no choice but to live or die chooses life, however horrifying it's going to have to be through no doing of your own.

It would be great to think we'd all be noble enough to openly resist from the start (providing of course, that you knew where the start was), or simply say 'no - so shoot me'. But most people don't.

On balance, generally recommend, and definitely so if you're invested. But don't rush through something you're enjoying to get to 'The Testaments' quicker.

Inspired by my enjoyment of the two very different but both superb, sensitive portrayals of Princess Margaret in The Crown, I bought the Craig Brown book "Ma'am Darling" hoping for a wildly b*tchy read along the lines of Jackie Oh! by Kitty Kelley - which by the way, is absolutely brilliant and retains its charm, to the extent I bought a replacement for the copy that I'd lent someone who didn't return it.

Favourite part - on the roof terrace of her psychiatrists building where Jackie in trademark sunglasses was smoking and taking in the sights and sounds of Manhattan below, after a session on the couch, a woman recognizes her and says "Oh my God, you're Jackie O". The reply was "That's my problem. Leave me alone".

Instead of entertainment, I found the PM book to be one of the nastiest travesties I've ever read. Filled cover to cover with rampant misogyny and a deep loathing for his subject. It upset me. I couldn't in all conscience give it away or donate it, and I can't destroy a book. So I'm stuck with the thing, taunting me from the shelf for having bought it in the first place.

Today a book my son wanted arrived...



Appropriately titled. Tonight, I discover that he broke my most treasured pair of Versace sunglasses - one of the legs fell from a bag of rubbish as I took it outside. He's in bed, so I've left the shattered remains by the kitchen sink so he can be confronted by my knowledge of his careless lack of responsibility when he goes to get a glass of water. I've had those since 1997.

It's on on telly right now!