THE TESTAMENTS by Margaret Atwood

I have not watched any episodes of the TV series based on Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, but apparently in this book she makes an effort not to contradict the TV series.  This novel takes place around fifteen years later, and Gilead, the fascist misogynist country that occupies most of the U.S., is still thriving, but the three narrators of this novel may be able to widen some cracks in the regime.  Two teenagers, Agnes in Gilead and Daisy in Canada, both eventually discover that their parents who raised them are not their biological parents.  The third narrator, who is recording her thoughts surreptitiously, is the powerful Aunt Lydia, who has apparently become, or was always, disillusioned, with Gilead’s treatment of women.  I actually liked the format of this book, but I don’t think it’s one of Atwood’s best.  There is not enough suspense and perhaps even too much optimism about the fate of Gilead.  I also found the characters to be a little thin until near the end when Daisy, later known as Jade, shows more grit than I really expected of her.  Agnes, too, has a moment of gumption when confronted with the prospect of marrying a man old enough to be her grandfather.  Although Lydia knows both what came before Gilead, and how much she has lost, and what life there is like now, the two teenagers know only their own separate and wildly distinctive worlds.  Each finds herself in a situation in which she has to survive on the unfamiliar turf of the other’s environment, and I found their adaptations to be the most revealing in terms of who they are and what they are capable of.