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The Testaments
by Margaret Atwood
2019 / 381 pages
read by a cast 13h 18m
rating: 9 / sci-fi?
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I enjoyed The Handmaid’s Tale, the book to which this is a sequel,  but I wasn’t wow’ed even if Atwood is one my most admired writers.  I’d be hard pressed to say which of her books is my favorite – The Blind Assassin probably.  It’s possible that reading The Handmaid’s Tale is not a prerequisite for The Testaments but I can assure you that the reader will get a lot more out of it if it has been read.  

Anyway,  this is a hard book to follow – there are two 1st person narrators and their chapter  alternate within Parts which have distinguishable front pages with a graphic suitable to a character.  And each of these characters uses different names. The chapters of two characters are related via “transcript” while another character’s chapters are via Holograph.   It gets tricky in some places – I think it deserves a couple readings anyway.  Very imaginative.  

I was going to say that I don’t think two books should have shared the Booker Prize this year,  but maybe I’ve changed my mind, I’ll have to reread Girl, Woman, Other to decide. .