Tag: not good

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.

Moving Review

This book gets 1 old house out of 5. This house should look more ominous, but all the photos of ominous houses were small houses, and I decided that a big rich person house was more important. The point being that luxurious, beautiful facades can actually be the most false and misleading ones.
[There is a beautiful, light yellowish Gothic-inspired house sitting amidst some green trees.]
  • Why did I pick this book up?

A few months back, I got some books at the bookstore on their infamous 3/$10 table. This was the last book from that pile. Honestly, I was pretty excited for it, but had left it til last because it was the longest, and I had read a ton of long books in the past few months.

It was also right before Christmas, and I knew that I would be able to go get some new books soon, so I figured that again, should read what I already own.

  • Would I recommend why/why not?

As evidenced by my rating, I did not like this book. Typically, I would not recommend books I did not enjoy. So that goes for this book as well.

I would not recommend this book because it was asinine as hell, the big reveal and payoff was so not worth it, and the characters were dumb and annoying. Also the metaphors this writer used at times were actually goddamn insane and left me laughing in confusion. So I guess that could be a reason to read the book; have a laugh!

Actually, I recommend this book if you are wondering how NOT to write a book. If you have a kind of cool story percolating in your head, read this book first and ask yourself “is my story more interesting than this one?”

If the answer is “no,” then DO NOT WRITE A BOOK WITH THAT STORY. If it’s more interesting than Moving, it may not necessarily be a good book, but it will definitely be better and more interesting than Moving so that could be a great argument to convince a publisher to give it a go?

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

So this story is told in a non-linear manner, and from three different point of views. I will give a brief overview.

The book starts with Edwina, an old lady who lives by herself in a big house that is quickly falling into disrepair. We learn that Edwina was widowed young, with two twins, Rowena and James. She remarries a man who has a son around the same age as her twins, Lucas. Her step-son hates her and his dad’s new family, which like, fair. He’s a damn child, he’s supposed to be childish. I’m trying to think of what details are relevant, because honestly there is a lot of tedium. I’d say Edwina’s section is the most interesting because she is an unreliable narrator by virtue of her impending dementia and also has some commentary on how shitty and hard it was to be an independent career woman in the “good old days”.

We realize that Edwina is essentially totally alone: her second husband has been dead for years, her daughter Rowena is estranged, and James is dead. We go through their sordid and twisted pasts; James was always a troubled and troubling child who goes to a boarding school and blows the whistle on a teacher who molests his students. This is not portrayed with nearly enough seriousness in my opinion. There is an “incident” that is alluded to the whole time, but we don’t know what it is, and other than knowing that James dies young, we do not find out any details at this point.

The next point of view is from a girl named Fern. She sucks and is my least favourite. She is some rich girl who goes to acting school and befriends/starts fucking James even though she is engaged to some boring military dude. She has a cousin who is also a rich girl and loves to party and do drugs. James goes to some posh party with this cousin, gives her drugs, and she dies from an accidental overdose. This, we discover, is the dreaded incident the book has been hinting at this whole time. James goes to jail for negligence or manslaughter or some shit, just as Fern discovers that she is pregnant and doesn’t know who the father is.

The last section is in Lucas’ point of view. Here, we discover that he is the reason James went to jail: he saw James give the rich girl drugs, and reported it to the police when she died. So, he was a good Samaritan realistically. Like, not a villain in my opinion. We also learn that his parents’ divorce affected him so terribly because his mother tried to commit suicide as a result, and this is the root cause for his hatred of Edwina and her children. We learn that James remained a drug addict after he left prison, eventually dying in Thailand from a drug overdose before he is thirty.

Lucas is now a grown-up and wants to atone/is tormented by guilt for his actions. So eventually he goes to Edwina and apologizes. We learn that Rowena is a lesbian (apparently that was what made her so ‘weird’ which as a queer person just gtfo also how is this Rowena’s only character trait other than being studious I’m over this book’s character development) and living in Australia, estranged from Edwina because she blames Rowena for James’ death. Edwina decides that she wants to reconnect with her daughter. The book thankfully ends.

  • Overall brain gushings :

Readers, this book is actually insane. Also we don’t get any insight into the more interesting characters; the narration is told from the point of view of the three worst and most annoying characters in the book, which is saying something. Why don’t we get any actual insight into James? Or Rowena? So lame.

Also, the climatic betrayal/secret reveal is so underwhelming! I get it, blaming your step-brother for a tragic death and testifying in court for his criminal case is shitty, but it isn’t actually even that shitty. Particularly when James is sort of to blame for the socialite’s death! Why shouldn’t he experience some form of punishment? Just because he is a rich, handsome, white boy? NO! It’s not like Lucas then made James relapse and die of a drug overdose. If anything, Moving seems to make it seem like this outcome may have been inevitable and had nothing to do with Lucas. I get it family dynamics are complicated, and this was a messed up one, but by giving us so much of Lucas’ backstory and motivations, his actions as a boy are quasi-justified, and he comes off as a sympathetic character worthy of pity! So there isn’t even a good antagonist! And the whole “no one is totally evil” thing is a good concept, but to me did not read as interesting or rewarding. Get rid of the two tragic deaths at the hand of drugs and this story is not special or intriguing at all. And in fact, with the opioid crisis what it is today in North America, two deaths at the hands of drugs is sadly not very out of the norm, and I feel no sympathy reading about two rich kids accidentally overdosing when there is a much more real and unjust drug crisis happening in our very backyards. I’d rather read an interesting commentary on that!

This book was so over the top and at the same time boring and bad, that I took a photo of it in my sad work cubicle, in front of phones that never get used because that is how this book made me feel.
[A hand holds the book Moving in front of a grey carpet and some old office supplies. The most interesting part of the cover is the tagline “A family home, filled with secrets. For Sale.”]
  • What does it mean?

So apparently Jenny Eclair is like a celebrity author type lady that does the rounds on talkshows and has a really loyal following, and this book received a ton of reviews gushing about “the realistic characters” and the “layered” plot and the depth of the themes of family and betrayal that it discussed… So it could mean a lot of great things.

I really did not like this book, but I can still acknowledge that it is a book that highlights the sad fact that our relationships with people are largely based on our own perceptions, and that we get in the way of truly connecting with people because of resentment and a bitterness we are too afraid to face.

There were also some interesting meditations on what it means to have our identities constructed around memories and experiences when our memory and recollections start to fade. And even before our memories fade and warp, can they really be trusted? Are they ever unbiased? The answer is a clear no.

I would like to point up that I was, not to be too dramatic, shocked and appalled by the raving reviews online by readers for this book. I get that opinions vary, but I kept thinking, did we read the same book?!

  • Favourite passages :

There are no such thing as favourite passages in this book, but what I present to you dear reader, is much more enjoyable; instead we have the most bat-shit metaphors and turns of phrases in this book! Seriously, some of these straight up made me uncomfortable!

This passage is actually the epitome of jaw-droppingly bizarre and terrifying and I actually had to put the book down, wondering what human, especially what human woman could write this:

She doesn’t know how Jill does it. She’s obviously besotted with Rob but she can still eat, whereas Fern can barely choke down three grains of rice at a time. Under the table, her vagina beats as if she has a spare heart tucked away down there.

Eclair, pg 175

EEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKK!!!! What in tarnation is that paragraph?! A spare heart down there?! Also why are we moving from talking about her appetite to talking about her PULSATING VAGINA?! I know this was supposed to be sexy or like erotic or something, but I nearly died. As someone who has a vagina, and actually likes vaginas that are not my own, I found this description to make my skin crawl! Ew ew ew.

Sandra, who play the oldest Prozorova sister, doesn’t believe in using deodorant or shaving her underarms.

It’s a good job her dress has sleeves, thinks Fern. My mother might pass out at the sight of a lady exposing her underarm hair! She wouldn’t believe it; she’d think she was keeping a gerbil under each armpit.

Fern’s hands are shaking so much she can barely pin her hair into a bun, a bun which she has been practicing putting into place on a much more regular basis than her diaphragm.

pg 154

A gerbil?! I get it, this is meant to show that Fern’s mom is super judgemental and conservative, but could this scene have been written any more horrifically? There are just literally a million better ways to show this, or even to comment on a woman’s body hair, but I am so over Fern and her weird fucking narrative voice that is also judgemental but thinks she’s not, and is grossly horny in the most innapropriate moments. I’m no prude, but I’m tired of reading about her mean mom one second, and then how she can’t stop thinking about sucking cock! A literal quote!

Also, you should be practicing putting a bun in more often than a diaphragm! I get that this is supposed to be foreshadowing that Fern is bad with birth control, but Jesus, what a bad comparison and what a stupid way to foreshadow what turns out to be pretty important to the plot!

Also I’m done picking crazy passages because it would basically be me quoting most of the things Fern thinks or does, as well as some pretty choice passages from Lucas and Edwina.

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

If you liked my review and want to read an actually engaging tale about family secrets and family stories, read Michael Ondaatje’s semi-autobiographical text Running in the Family. A book about memories, and how stories are changed by their teller, this is Ondaatje’s tour de force in my opinion. It also blends prose with poetry and photographs, making it a multi-layered text that changes every time you engage with it.

Another good read about family dynamics, the ties between siblings, and how trauma can affect a whole family structure, I cannot recommend On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light by Cordelia Strube enough. This book is one of the most beautiful books I’ve read, and is also Canadian literature, so that’s great!

Stay tuned for my next review, the much-anticipated new book by Margaret Atwood, The Testaments. Will I like this book? Will I hate it? Will it live up to The Handmaid’s Tale? The answer to all of these questions is NO! Read on to see why!