Hope in The Testaments
Atwood notes that while the first book establishes Gilead eventually collapses, its sequel brings readers closer to discovering how. She promises that the book contains plenty of hope.
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7 min read
Our age bandAges 16+ · Older teens & adults
Reader rating
4.6 · 51,254 Amazon ratings
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The Testaments
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood Review: A Propulsive, Prize-Winning Return to Gilead
Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, the Booker Prize-winning sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, returns to the theocratic republic of Gilead fifteen years on, delivering a thriller-paced narrative through three distinct female voices — Aunt Lydia, Agnes Jemima, and Daisy — whose converging stories expose the regime's internal rot. Now a Hulu Original series, this media tie-in edition from Vintage keeps one of contemporary fiction's most celebrated sequels firmly in the spotlight.
LuvemBooks Verdict
Best for
Readers of politically charged literary fiction who want to return to Gilead with the pacing of a thriller — whether they're coming fresh, following the Hulu series, or finally ready to see what happened after The Handmaid's Tale.
Worth it if
You want a propulsive, plot-driven sequel that delivers narrative momentum, a surprisingly rich interiority for Aunt Lydia, and genuine hope alongside the dread — especially if you're watching the Hulu adaptation.
Skip if
You prize the elliptical, unsettling ambiguity of the 1985 original above all else — The Testaments trades that moral fog for clarity and catharsis, and that trade-off is real and deliberate.
What readers & critics say
Wikipedia's summary of the critical record notes that Sarah Crown in Literary Review praised The Testaments as "politically and emotionally satisfying," while observing it lacks, compared to The Handmaid's Tale, "the richness and the sense of jeopardy" — a consequence of Atwood's exchange of ambiguity for clarity. The Washington Independent Review of Books credited Atwood with "saber-sharp prose and clever wit" in developing the novel's carefully foreshadowed plot surprises, while Kirkus Reviews noted that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel "generated more horror and outrage," implicitly framing the sequel's greater legibility as a meaningful tonal shift.
Sources: Wikipedia, Washington Independent Review of Books, Kirkus Reviews4.6from 51,254 Amazon ratings— reader ratings, not a LuvemBooks score
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The Testaments is Margaret Atwood's Booker Prize-winning sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, set fifteen years on in Gilead and told through the interlocking testimonies of Aunt Lydia, Agnes Jemima, and Daisy — three women whose converging choices expose the regime's internal rot with the momentum of a Gothic thriller. Rare among sequels, it earned simultaneous critical acclaim and commercial dominance, landing the Booker Prize and the number-one spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Readers who prized the elliptical dread and moral ambiguity of the 1985 original should approach with calibrated expectations — this is a more plot-driven, cathartic, and deliberately kinetic story.
- Is it worth reading?
- The Testaments delivers on both the literary and thriller registers it sets out to occupy: the Booker Prize and global number-one bestseller status reflect a rare alignment of critical and commercial recognition. Serena Davies described it as 'a blockbuster of propulsive, almost breathless narrative, stacked with twists and turns worthy of a Gothic novel,' and USA Today credited its power to 'Atwood's capacity to surprise, even writing in a universe we think we know so well.' The key caveat, as noted in the Literary Review, is that it trades the richness and unresolved jeopardy of the original for something more legible and plot-driven — a meaningful tonal shift, though not a diminishment of the sequel's achievement.
- Similar books
- Readers drawn to The Testaments for its politically charged dystopia and female-centred narratives might also explore Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which similarly uses restrained, documentary-style narration to expose an oppressive social order. Naomi Alderman's The Power offers a comparable inversion of patriarchal structures with thriller pacing. For another multi-voice narrative set inside a collapsing authoritarian world, Viet Thanh Nguyen's The Sympathizer rewards the same reader. Those who want to return to the source should, of course, read or reread The Handmaid's Tale itself.
- Who should read this?
- Readers who want politically charged literary fiction with the momentum of a thriller will find The Testaments precisely calibrated for them. It is an especially strong fit for fans of the Hulu adaptation looking to deepen their engagement with Gilead, and for readers of The Handmaid's Tale who have been waiting for more time with Aunt Lydia and the world Atwood built. Those who prize the original novel's elliptical dread and refusal to resolve should approach with tempered expectations — the sequel is a different, more kinetic kind of story, and deliberately so.
- Tell me about the adaptation
- The Hulu Original series adaptation of The Testaments stars Ann Dowd reprising her acclaimed role as Aunt Lydia, alongside Chase Infiniti as Agnes and Lucy Halliday as Daisy — the three central voices of the novel. Atwood coordinated the writing of the novel directly with the television production, communicating to producers where her sequel was taking key characters, a degree of cross-medium collaboration that makes the two properties unusually intertwined. This Vintage edition is a media tie-in timed to the series, making it a natural companion read for viewers.
- What are the main themes?
- At its core, The Testaments examines how authoritarian systems sustain themselves through complicity — and how that same complicity contains the seeds of their undoing. Aunt Lydia's first-person narrative is the novel's primary vehicle for this: it gives readers access to the internal logic of a woman who enforces Gilead's brutality while simultaneously working against it. The novel also engages with questions of female agency under patriarchy, the transmission of testimony across generations, and — more explicitly than its predecessor — the possibility of political hope and resistance.
- Is this a good book club pick?
- The Testaments is a strong book club choice, particularly for groups who have already read The Handmaid's Tale and want to debate the merits of the sequel's tonal shift. The three-narrator structure — Aunt Lydia, Agnes Jemima, and Daisy — gives groups distinct character perspectives to compare, while the central question of whether the novel's cathartic resolution enriches or diminishes Atwood's world offers a genuinely contested critical conversation. The Literary Review's observation that it is 'politically and emotionally satisfying' but lacks the original's 'richness and sense of jeopardy' is itself a productive prompt.
Summarize this book
Is it worth reading?
Who should read this?
Tell me about the adaptation
What are the main themes?
Is this a good book club pick?
Summarize this book
Set fifteen years after The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments unfolds through three documentary testimonies: Aunt Lydia, the formidable enforcer from the original novel; Agnes Jemima, a young woman raised inside Gilead; and Daisy, a girl living beyond its borders. Together, their accounts — framed as historical documents recovered after the fact — trace how Gilead's inner decay becomes exploitable, and how these three women's choices might ignite the regime's downfall. Atwood structures the novel as both a standalone read and a sequel, and has described it as containing "tons of hope — lots and lots of hope," a pointed tonal departure from its predecessor.
Follow up
What happens to Aunt Lydia in the story?
How does the 'historical documents' framing work?
Is there a resolution at the end?
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Atwood's sequel is a #1 New York Times bestseller and Booker Prize winner that dismantles Gilead from within through three interlocking testimonies — and it is as much a thriller as it is a literary reckoning.
What the Novel Actually Is and Does
Set fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments unfolds through three distinct narrative voices: Aunt Lydia, the formidable enforcer familiar from the original novel; Agnes Jemima, a young woman raised inside Gilead; and Daisy, a girl living outside its borders. Together, their testimonies — structured as documents recovered after the fact, consistent with Atwood's "historical notes" framing device — trace how the regime's inner decay becomes exploitable.
The novel's central tension turns on how these three women's choices might ignite Gilead's downfall. As Atwood told CBS News Sunday Morning's Martha Teichner, the book contains "tons of hope — lots and lots of hope," a pointed counterweight to assumptions about its premise.
Significance: Sequel, Prize, and Cultural Moment
First published in 2019, The Testaments arrived after more than three decades of readers living with The Handmaid's Tale and several seasons of the Hulu adaptation keeping Gilead in the cultural conversation. The novel won the Booker Prize and became a global number-one bestseller — a rare commercial and critical alignment for literary fiction.
This Vintage edition is a media tie-in timed to the Hulu Original series adaptation, which stars Ann Dowd reprising her role as Aunt Lydia, alongside Chase Infiniti as Agnes and Lucy Halliday as Daisy. Atwood coordinated the writing of the novel with the television production, communicating to producers where her sequel was taking key characters — a degree of cross-medium collaboration that underlines just how intertwined the two properties have become.
Strengths: Pace, Structure, and Surprise
Critical reception zeroed in on the novel's relentless momentum. Serena Davies, writing in The Daily critics, called it "a blockbuster of propulsive, almost breathless narrative, stacked with twists and turns worthy of a Gothic novel."
Michiko Kakutani, in critics, described it as "a fast, immersive narrative that's as propulsive as it is melodramatic." USA Today* credited the book's power to "Atwood's capacity to surprise, even writing in a universe we think we know so well." Aunt Lydia in particular emerges as the novel's most complex engine: granting her a first-person voice allows Atwood to excavate the machinery of complicity from the inside, giving readers access to the logic that sustains authoritarian systems while simultaneously showing its fracture lines.
The Central Critique: Clarity Over Ambiguity
The most consistent note of reservation in the critical record concerns what the novel trades away for its narrative momentum. In Literary Review, Sarah Crown praised The Testaments as "politically and emotionally satisfying," while observing that it lacks, compared to The Handmaid's Tale, "the richness and the sense of jeopardy" — a consequence of Atwood exchanging her earlier novel's studied ambiguity for something more legible and plot-driven.
Where The Handmaid's Tale left readers in an unsettled moral fog, The Testaments moves toward resolution and, at times, catharsis. For readers who prized the original's refusal to comfort, this shift registers as a meaningful tonal change.
It does not diminish the sequel's achievement so much as define its different appetite.
Who This Book Is For
The Testaments is designed to function both as a standalone read and as a sequel — the publisher states explicitly that it can be entered without prior knowledge of The Handmaid's Tale, though readers coming to it fresh will encounter a richer context with the original in hand. The media tie-in edition makes it a natural companion to the Hulu series.
Readers drawn to politically charged literary fiction with the pacing of a thriller, and those who want to spend more time with a world and a set of moral questions that have proven stubbornly resonant, will find the novel delivers on both counts. Those seeking the elliptical dread of the 1985 original should approach with calibrated expectations — this is a different, more kinetic kind of story, and deliberately so.
Sources & Further Reading
The key facts and claims in this review are grounded in the retrieved, verified sources listed below.
- Cited in this review
- 1
thebookerprizes.com
- 2
- Further reading
- 3
en.wikipedia.org
- 4
kirkusreviews.com
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
penguinrandomhouse.ca
- 10
Washington Independent Review of Books
Age & Reading Level
Our age band
Ages 16+
Reading level
Older teens & adults
Our age band groups books for browsing; it isn't an age a review gave.
4 content notes · who it suits
Content to know about
institutional violence against women
sexual coercion and enforced marriage
authoritarian indoctrination of children
complicity in systemic oppression
Best for: Adults / mature 16+ — themes of authoritarian violence, sexual coercion, and institutional complicity require a reader equipped to engage with morally complex, politically dark material.
Skip if you are seeking the unresolved moral ambiguity and elliptical dread of The Handmaid's Tale — The Testaments moves toward cathartic resolution and thriller momentum instead.
Margaret Atwood on The Testaments
Author Margaret Atwood speaks with CBS Sunday Morning about her career, the cultural resonance of The Handmaid's Tale, and her sequel, The Testaments.
Uploaded by CBS Sunday Morning, 2019 · Watch on YouTube ·
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