the Walnut Diary

Yesterday I picked up a copy of Testaments in Costco.  At the cash I commented that the experience would be more complete if a stern woman with glasses were on hand to sign my book.  The cashier grinned, told me she is often accused of a stern gaze, but segued into an account of the last book signing she remembers in the Kingston store.  “It was a hockey player.”

To my surprise I read the first half of the book last night.  Lady Atwood can keep the reader turning the pages, and regularly drops these memorable one-liners which leave me wishing I had a pencil with me while reading her work.

Part of the book’s appeal is the short attention span required to read it.  It’s epistolary in structure, and the diary entries are only a couple of pages in many cases.  Perhaps Atwood had the world she wanted to create in mind and put together bits of the tapestry in each day’s writing.  In any case, the narrative is masterfully done and quite accessible to the casual reader.

In The Handmaid’s Tale Canada was the unformed idea of escape from theocratic tyranny.  Perhaps as a nod to the success of the television series, Testaments moves many of its scenes to Toronto.  Offred’s dream of escape becomes a later-day underground railroad with complaints about the porous border in this case coming from the theocrats to the south, rather than the Conservative Party of Canada.

And that’s about as far as I have read so far.  The Testaments is a fine read, and I’ll complete this review later.

UPDATE:  14 November, 2019

It’s frustrating not having the book to enjoy any more.  I won’t spoil it with too much information at this point, so I’ll just stress that it has a number of vibrant and contrasting characters, there is a bit of run-and-duck adventure narrative, as well as a rich dollop of political intrigue in this sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale.

The novel has deserved its accolades.  It will not disappoint.