Tag: intrigue

The Testaments Review

This book gets 2 brown sack dresses that the Aunts wear in Gilead out of 5. I thought this stack of sacks of coffee was a pretty accurate visual representation of what they look like without subjecting me to copyright infringement.
[As the caption suggests, this is a picture of a pile of brown coffee sacks. They look worn and would make itchy dresses.]
  • Why did I pick this book up?

You guys, I picked this book up because The Handmaid’s Tale has been having a moment for like three years now. I read the OG book when I was a young teen and loved it, am a somewhat fan of the show, and kept seeing posters for this damn book everywhere!

My partner also very thoughtfully gifted me this book for Christmas, so I was just so excited and ready to dive into this book. I am typically a fan of Atwood’s work: I don’t love it all, and to be frank I have a tendency to like her older work. But, since this was a sequel to her old work, and something I loved, I was super excited.

  • Would I recommend why/why not?

Although I didn’t enjoy this book a ton, I would recommend it as like an entertaining read that isn’t going to require a lot of work. It’s a good book if you’re on a train or something like that.

I would recommend this book to you if you are a fan of the show the Handmaid’s Tale, but not a big fan of the book. I personally liked the ambiguity of the original book – I liked that we didn’t know if June actually escaped or not, if she had been betrayed or not. I also liked the ambiguity of whether the Colonies actually existed, or were merely a piece of propaganda to control people in Gilead.

Now, the show totally obliterated this ambiguity, and honestly that is probably my biggest issue with the show (that and its tendency to get a little torture-pornish). So, since The Testaments takes the events of the show to be true and what happens in this universe, the ambiguity of The Handmaid’s Tale (the novel) is not to be found. So again, this could be either a selling point to you, or a detriment.

Part of my dislike of this book also lies with the fact that there are so many Atwood books that I have enjoyed more, as demonstrated in my Alias Grace review, and the knowledge and expectation that I could have enjoyed this book so much more definitely hurt its overall score, and made my criticisms a tad more vitriolic than they would have been with a different author. I had expectations Margaret!

  • Quick Synopsis  **SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON, DO I EVEN HAVE TO SAY IT?!**:

Now, this story is told from the point of view of three women; we quickly discover one of them is the famed Aunt Lydia, and the other two are some sort of peripheral girls (who eventually become aunts), only identified by their “witness testimony” number. Now, this led me to believe that maybe these women had conspired against Gilead and been caught, and that they were being persecuted and held up as an example to the women of Gilead of what not to do. However, it quickly becomes clear that instead, these women make it OUT of Gilead, and these testimonies are their record of what happened in Gilead. This was interesting, but quickly lowered the stakes for me, as I knew these women had to be successful for their testimonies to be collected and preserved.

Anonymous woman 1 (known as Agnes) is revealed to be the ‘daughter’ of a high-ranking Commander and his wife. We quickly discover that she is not their biological daughter, and that her biological mother is hunted by Gilead. It is pretty easy to connect the dots and realize that Agnes is June’s first daughter, the one she was separated from before the events of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Anonymous woman 2 (known as Daisy) is a young girl living in Canada. Her parents run a secondhand clothing store. She doesn’t have a lot in common with them. It becomes really easy to deduce that she is the escaped Baby Nicole, or June’s second baby that is spirited out of Gilead by June and Serena Joy in the TV show. I felt like Atwood was putting clues about Daisy’s lineage way too much, because I figured it out as soon as we saw we had a character in Canada, and after Baby Nicole got mentioned a few times just felt like, “ok I get it, just actually give me the reveal because I’ve figured it out”.

This is one of those weird books where a lot of stuff happens, but also not a lot happens? It’s very plot driven, as opposed to character driven, and apart from Lydia, the characters are mostly responding to events around them, or having things done to them, rather than being active participants. This means I’m going to gloss over a lot of stuff.

But basically, Baby Nicole/Daisy’s fake parents get killed in a bomb, obviously placed by Gilead. This is when Daisy learns that she is actually Baby Nicole, and that Mayday (the resistance group, remember them?) has an operative in Gilead sending them a ton of insider information and documents. Aparently, their way of transmitting information is compromised or something, because the source demand that Baby Nicole be delivered to Gilead, given a ton of documents on a microdot implanted in her arm, and then extracted. We easily realize that this mystery source is Aunt Lydia! Surprise, this whole time Aunt Lydia has just been trying to get powerful to dismantle Gilead from within!

Baby Nicole makes in into Gilead as a ‘Pearl Girl’ who are like Gilead’s missionaries and Aunts in training. There she meets Agnes (who if you are not keeping track, is her half sister, DUN DUN DUN!) who is training to be an Aunt. As soon as this happens, Lydia reveals herself to Agnes and Nicole as conspiring against Gilead, and explains Nicole’s identity to Agnes. Then she tells them that they must escape with these documents and hopefully bring about the downfall of Gilead.

Then there is a bit of a thrilling ish escape (where we basically get to see what is only hinted at in The Handmaid’s Tale – escaping Gilead and the routes that mimic the Underground Railroad) and then Agnes and Nicole make it to Canada, where they see June, their mom. Then the book ends, and we get an epilogue that mimics the epilogue of The Handmaid’s Tale; it is an academic conference on the topic of Gilead, this one held a year after the one we read about in the first book. There is the usual commentary that society has not changed much, the idea that fascism and regimes can be dismantled from within, and the notion that we must learn from history. The end. Praise be, under his eye, it is over. Blessed be the fruit that is moving on to a better dystopian series.

Because I have been swamped at work, instead of a cool thematic background to the book you just get me holding it in my cubicle because the time has come to update this damn blog.
[This is a picture of The Testaments: the cover is mostly black, with a graphic of a woman in a white wimple and green cloak. Over this woman is the silhouette of a woman with arms upraised, perhaps in rebellion?]
  • Overall brain gushings :

Here are my overall thoughts about why this book pales in comparison to the OG tale, starting with my least favourite thing; like the show, this book kills all the ambiguity I loved in The Handmaid’s Tale. I loved not knowing if June lived past the first text, I loved not knowing if the colonies were real or propaganda, and I especially loved not knowing Aunt Lydia and other nefarious characters’ motivations or true allegiances! I was seriously bummed at the way in which this book killed Aunt Lydia’s complexity. Sometimes, people are evil. Sometimes, people want power. Sometimes, people will betray the very communities they belong to to achieve their means. And sometimes, those people are women. I also thought that Aunt Lydia’s idea of dismantling Gilead from within was sort of dumb, and obscured the reality that even Lydia wasn’t willing to admit to herself: she did everything out of the selfish need for survival. Then, she probably felt guilty and decided she needed to change her ways. To me, this is more interesting, and less naive. So why the hell did Atwood make the character choices she did?

Also, while The Handmaid’s Tale is a story about bearing witness to survival, about what people will go through to survive, and the ones who decide survival is not enough, The Testaments is a just an action tale about resisting an oppressive regime. There isn’t even much ideological depth or exploration, and instead of a poignant narrative about humanity and the desire to live, we get a somewhat exciting escape narrative. Which is fine if that is what you came for. That is not what I came to the narrative world of Gilead for.

  • What does it mean?

Ok. Well, obviously this book means that being a theocratic dystopia is bad. There’s a lot of interesting stuff about the ties that bind people: are we bound by experience, by gender, by familial ties, by belief?

This book also means that even in the face of desperation, of what seems like a totally dystopian reality, there is room for hope. Dictatorships and horrible regimes have been overthrown, and can be again. So to those of us who have been incredibly depressed by the cheeto known as Trump, it’s not over until the results of the 2020 election! And if he wins, I guess we have to pray that a high-ranking woman will pull an Aunt Lydia and try and burn it all to the ground?

And not to state the ridiculously evident, but the book wants us to realize the dangers of viewing women as property, drawing comparisons between the infringements on women’s reproductive rights and the all-too-scary-because-it-could-be-the-future Republic of Gilead.

  • Favourite passages :

Oddly enough for a Atwood book, I had very few passages flagged as interesting or impactful; again, see my rating for this book.

I was at the age at which parents suddenly transform from people who know everything into people who know nothing.

Atwood, pg 44.

To my parents, I apologize for being like Baby Nicole as a teenager and thinking you knew nothing.

Every woman wanted a baby, said Aunt Estee. Every woman who wasn’t an Aunt or a Martha, said Aunt Vidala, what earthly use were you if you didn’t have a baby?

pg 81.

The Testaments obviously follows a lot of interesting themes that The Handmaid’s Tale is interested in, and this is probably the clearest indication we have of Gilead’s core beliefs about women and how they subjugate them.

“No one wants to die,” said Becka. “But some people don’t want to live in any of the ways that are allowed.”

pg 294.

I found this passage really moving and interesting with regard to the different reactions that people will have in the face of crisis and oppression. Will we live? Will we join the bad guys to try and dismantle it from within? Is just living enough? What is more brave? What has a better chance of affecting real change?

  • If you liked this (or my review), consider reading :

I mean, if you haven’t read it yet, go read The Handmaid’s Tale! All the things I dislike about The Testaments lies largely in how great Handmaid is and it never needed a sequel! I hate sequel and remake culture, argh, make it stop!

If you want an excellent read about the sexual subjugation of women, and the lessons we can take from history, read Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. Another great feminist-dystopia that I’m pretty sure I’ve recommended before is Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower.

I haven’t read this book yet, but it is going on my to-read list right now; Naomi Alderman’s, The Power, which is apparently about a world where women can harm people just by touching them, and the ways in which women begin to enjoy this dangerous new-found dominance.

Stay tuned for my next review, Ronan Farrow’s explosive Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators. A little bit of a trigger warning as this is Farrow’s account of his various investigations into sexual assaults in media and politics.

Decorum Review

This book gets three gorgeous gowns out of 5. I couldn’t find anything that fit the 1890s style, but these dresses are all so pretty I don’t even care.
[There is a triptych of gowns: a purple ruffly dress, a pale orange gown, and a white long-sleeved wedding dress with buttons all up the back. I would wear all these dresses if I had the money/reason to.]

Apologies for running a little late with this weekend’s review… my work schedule has been insane and all over the place which has delayed me. I have also fallen behind on my reading and am finally at the point where my blogging has caught up to my reading so I need to set aside some real reading time this week to get back on track. For you readers, I’ll do it!

  • Why did I pick this book up?

I started reading Kaaren Christopherson’s Decorum because it was another one of the 3/$10 books I bought recently. Also, I was in the mood for some historical fiction, and seeing how I’ve blown through Sarah Waters’ catalogue this spring, this was my most handy option. The protagonist is also a woman named Francesca Lund, and I grew up in a village called Lund, so this happy coincidence didn’t hurt.

I have a lot of love for novels set in the Victorian era, because I am one of those rare English scholars that HATES Victorian lit, but loves historical fiction set in that time. I hate Jane Austen, and I think part of it is because I am too dense to pick up on all the subtleties that happen in high society, so I’d rather read a contemporary take on the era and its behaviours. I need that shit spelled out to me, and also want to read a ton of descriptions of masked balls and corsets. This book does a decent delivery of those things.

  • Would I recommend why/why not?

I would recommend this book if you are into romantic intrigue and mysterious marriage schemes, but also like reading about fancy parties and 1890s America. That is very specific, I know. I would not recommend this book if you have no interest in love or romance, or marriage or whatever, because this book is pretty full of all that. I myself found myself getting bored for the last hundred pages of the book: the big scheming and intrigue had reached its climax, and I found the romantic subplot that took over to be a bit tedious. The book could’ve ended with the big reveal, and left the reader (that is me) to imagine that the romantic subplot would resolve itself in some fashion that would push the two characters who are ‘obviously’ supposed to wind up together into their proper places. Instead, I had to read another hundred pages of feelings and to me the only redeeming factor was that this was occurring in Banff, Canada, so that was neat.

  • Quick Synopsis  **SPOILER ALERT FROM HERE ON, DO I EVEN HAVE TO SAY IT?!**:

Broadstrokes here. Francesca Lund’s parents die in a tragic accident. We really start the novel five years later, when Francesca is finally back to living in her family home after being taken in by family friends. She is set to be engaged to a man named Edmund Tracey who has been pursuing her for years. It is quickly implied that Tracey is a cad who is maybe just after Francesca because she is loaded. I ain’t saying he a gold-digger… except that he totally is. So there is a ton of investigating into his past that goes on, and it’s pretty fun and enticing.

At the same time, the novel follows a man named Connor O’Casey, who I don’t think I really like, even by the end of the novel. Anyways, he is trying to be a self-made man, nouveau-riche in a world of old money. His ‘companion’ is a widow named Blanche, and she has a pretty cool backstory. I think she is my favourite character in the novel. Anyways, he is trying to build a fancy hotel in New York with some rich men, and he comes into Francesca’s orbit. He totally has the hots for her, and drama ensues in a crazy love… pentagon? It’s definitely more complicated than a love triangle.

Anyways, as mentioned, drama, big reveals, and even crime ensue. Eventually, the drama is resolved, a bunch of the characters go vacation in Banff, Canada (which is pretty neat and all about how fucking cold it is there, ha) and resolve their differences so they all end up happy and/or in love in some shape or form.

I apologize for the subpar photo… I snapped this in the early morning before running to work. A bad photo is better than no photo? Also I chose to feature our cute flower pot by Wildtreeceramics who is a local Ottawa artist.
[A hand holds a book that has a drawing of a woman in a pink dress. Behind the book is a succulent in a ceramic pot that says “zen as fuck” on it.]
  • Overall brain gushings :

My favourite aspects were the descriptions of clothes and society rules: the book’s chapters actually all begin with excerpts from an etiquette book and I found this framing device to be interesting and enlightening to the manners of the time. I definitely never would have made in far in that society; would have been so easy for me to put my foot in my mouth.

There were also some pretty funny tongue-in-cheek moments that pointed fun at gendered double standards, but also at times the book fell into its own traps. Just felt a tad sappy at times, and no character (except my main chick Blanche) seemed particularly exciting or progressive.

  • What does it mean?

The book is concerned with double standards and their affect on men and women’s abilities to pursue their desires, both in the Victorian era and the 21st century. It assesses how wealth and its pursuit transform people, but does not judge them, instead critiquing the fabric of society that has a tendency to make people miserable and insecure more than happy.

Buried in the novel are some interesting comments on “propriety”, and Decorum shows that manners do not make the man, or woman.

Here are some things I think the novel said to me, even if that wasnt Christopherson’s intent:

– You never really know someone! People change and are insanely good at hiding their true selves!

– Prenups are a good thing!

– And never trust a man who has a bunch of mysterious “friends” that he spends all his free time with, but that you never get to meet.

  • Favourite passages :

A lot of my favourite passages wound up being the excerpts from the etiquette book, because they were interesting commentaries on the novel and its plot, and also very enlightening for a ‘modern’ reader such as myself.

A man does himself no service with another when he obliges him to know people whom he would rather avoid.

Kaaren Christopherson, pg 65

This quote really spoke to the grouchy person that lives inside me, and my attempt to refuse fake and superficial interactions. It may make me seem like a jerk, but I’d rather seem like an honest bitch than a fake one.

There are two things that make people crazy — having money and not having money. If they haven’t any money of their own to control, they want to control somebody else’s.

Christopherson, pg 76

I feel like the following passage is something a lot of men could stand to learn properly.

If you are a gentleman, never lower the intellectual standard of your conversation in addressing ladies… When you ‘come down’ to commonplace or small-talk with an intelligent lady, one of the two things is the consequence, she either recognizes the condescension and despises you, or else she accepts it as the highest intellectual effort of which you are capable, and rates you accordingly.

Christopherson, pg 345
  • If you liked this (or my review), consider reading :

If you want to read some more historical fiction, I recommend anything by Sarah Waters! She is easily one of my top ten writers, and probably my favourite writer of historical fiction. If you want to stay in a similar time period as Decorum, read Waters’ Affinity.

Otherwise, The Wonder by Emma Donoghue (author of Room) is an interesting tale about 1860s Ireland and the tensions between science and faith. Stephen King reviewed it and liked it so there’s another reason to read The Wonder!

You could also read Libba Bray’s A Great and Terrible Beauty and its sequels; these were my favourite books as a young teenager, and I remember it being my first great introduction to historical fiction.

Stay tuned for my next review, Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot. Mailhot is a woman who grew up on a reservation in British Columbia and her memoir has received a ton of accolades in Canada; it was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and is easily the book I’ve been the most excited to read all year.