Study Guide for Book Clubs: The Testaments: Study Guides for Book Clubs, #41

By Kathryn Cope

A comprehensive book club guide to the Booker Prize-winning novel, The Testaments, this is an essential tool for all reading groups!

Covering a wealth of information on Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, this guide includes twenty-eight thought-provoking discussion questions; plot summaries of both novels; literary context; character breakdowns; themes & imagery; a discussion of the HULU TV series, and even a quick quiz.

Study Guides for Book Clubs are designed to help you get the absolute best from your book club meetings. Please be aware they are companion guides and do not contain the original text of the novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kathryn Cope
• Release date: Nov 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393931164

Kathryn Cope

Kathryn Cope graduated in English Literature from Manchester University and obtained her master’s degree in contemporary fiction from the University of York. She is the author of Study Guides for Book Clubs and the HarperCollins Offical Book Club Guide series. She lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands with her husband, son and dog.

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Introduction

There are few things more rewarding than getting together with a group of like-minded people and discussing a good book. Book club meetings, at their best, are vibrant, passionate affairs. Each member will bring along a different perspective and ideally there will be heated debate.

A surprising number of book club members, however, report that their meetings have been a disappointment. Even though their group loved the book they were discussing, they could think of astonishingly little to say about it. Failing to find interesting discussion angles for a book is the single most common reason for book group discussions to fall flat. Most book groups only meet once a month, and a lacklustre meeting is frustrating for everyone.

Study Guides for Book Clubs were born out of a passion for reading groups. Packed with information, they take the hard work out of preparing for a meeting and ensure that your book group discussions never run dry. How you choose to use the guides is entirely up to you. The author biography, style and historical context sections provide useful background information which may be interesting to share with your group at the beginning of your meeting. The all-important list of discussion questions, which will probably form the core of your meeting, can be found towards the end of this guide. To support your responses to the discussion questions, you may find it helpful to refer to the Setting, Themes, and Character sections.

A detailed plot synopsis is provided as an aide-memoire if you need to recap on the finer points of the plot. There is also a quick quiz – a fun way to test your knowledge and bring your discussion to a close. Finally, if this was a book that you particularly enjoyed, the guide concludes with a list of books similar in style or subject matter.

This guide contains spoilers. Please do not be tempted to read it before you have read the original novel as plot surprises will be well and truly ruined.

Kathryn Cope, 2019

Margaret Atwood

Life

Margaret Atwood, Canada’s most celebrated novelist, lives in Toronto. The daughter of a forest entomologist, she was born in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1939. She spent the early years of her life living in the wilds of North Quebec.

After taking her undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto, Atwood gained a master’s degree from Radcliffe College, Massachusetts, in 1962. She went on to teach English and then held a variety of academic posts while writing. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Atwood has been awarded sixteen honorary degrees; the Order of Ontario; the Norwegian Order of Literary Merit; and the Booker Prize.

Margaret Atwood is a vocal campaigner for human rights and environmental causes. She has enthusiastically embraced new writing technologies when many established authors have been wary of them. A regular contributor to Twitter, she has also used digital fiction platforms to launch her work and helped to develop the LongPen: a digital tool enabling authors to sign books for readers on the other side of the world.

Although well-known for her feminist themes and strong female characters, Atwood was accused by some of being a bad feminist during the #MeToo campaign. She faced this social backlash after voicing the opinion that men accused of sexual assault should go through the due process of the legal system before being condemned. Throughout her career, Atwood has resisted being labelled as a feminist writer as she points out that feminism can mean many different things to different people. Her commitment to equal rights for women, however, is unquestionable and the author actively promotes Equality Now – an organisation which campaigns for legal changes to protect and advance the human rights of women and girls across the world.

Work

Over the years, Atwood has experimented with different genres and subject matter within her fiction. Her novels have explored the boundaries of historical fiction, the detective novel, science fiction and Shakespeare. Although her subject matter is often dark, her work is characterised by a playful sense of humour.

Atwood’s extraordinary literary output has included short stories; screenplays; radio plays; essays; reviews; children’s books and several acclaimed collections of poetry. She is best known, for her novels:

The Edible Woman (1969)

Surfacing (1973)

Lady Oracle (1976)

Life Before Man (1980)

Bodily Harm (1981)

The Handmaid’s Tale (1986)

Cat’s Eye (1989)

Alias Grace (1996)

The Robber Bride (1993)

The Blind Assassin (2000)

Oryx and Crake (2003)

The Penelopiad (2005)

The Year of the Flood (2009)

MaddAddam 2013

The Heart Goes Last (2015)

Hag-Seed (2016)

The Testaments (2019)

The Hype

Over a career spanning fifty years, Margaret Atwood’s fiction has never fallen out of fashion. If anything, her themes and subject matter have become more relevant as time has gone on. Some readers have even credited the author with the power of prophecy, as several of her novels have anticipated future developments (e.g. lab-created meat in Oryx and Crake and the rise of sexbots in The Heart Goes Last).

Much of the success of Hulu’s recent TV adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale has been due to its relevance to contemporary audiences. Drawing parallels between Atwood’s Gilead and the current political climate of the USA, the show has struck a powerful chord with viewers. As a result, the distinctive costume of Handmaids has become a symbol of feminist resistance, worn by those protesting moves to restrict women’s rights to abortion. Handmaids’ robes and bonnets were also recently donned (apparently unironically) by Kylie Jenner and friends at a Handmaid’s Tale-themed birthday party.

In the past few years, The Handmaid’s Tale – already a modern classic – has taken on almost mythical status. When Atwood announced that she would publish a sequel, her timing could not have been better. In an official statement, the author declared that she had written The Testaments in response to the questions she had received from readers about Gilead over the years – the most common of which was How did Gilead fall? Further inspiration had been drawn, she added, from recent global events.

Pre-publication, anticipation of The Testaments reached near-fever-pitch as Atwood fans speculated on what the new novel may cover and from whose perspective it might be written. The author and her publishers guarded against spoilers by keeping the manuscript under close wraps. Up until the last moment, the novel had only been read by Atwood’s close colleagues. Even the judges of the Booker Prize (for which The Testaments was shortlisted a week before its publication) had to submit to non-disclosure agreements. Because of these extreme security precautions, there was an uproar when several hundred Amazon customers revealed that they had been sent their pre-ordered copy a week early by mistake.

Atwood’s publishing team expertly capitalised on readers’ anticipation of The Testaments. Publicity posters of the book’s cover with the caption All things come to she who waits appeared. On September 9th, 2019, Atwood fans in the United Kingdom were treated to a Handmaid’s festival at Waterstones’ store in Piccadilly, London. Attendees dressed as Handmaids, and readings and cocktails led up to the stroke of midnight, when readers could finally get their hands on a copy of the new novel. The launch was followed by Margaret Atwood’s appearance at the National Theatre, London, where she answered questions about the book, accompanied by readings from Lily James, Sally Hawkins and Ann Dowd. Showing herself to be thoroughly in the spirit of the affair, Atwood dressed to coordinate with the colours of the book cover, right down to her earrings and nail polish. The event was live streamed to over 1,000 cinemas across the world. Rarely has any book been at the centre of such a build-up.

So, the obvious question is, does The Testaments deserve the hype? Reviewers have been divided in their response. What they tend to agree on is that The Testaments is very different in pace and tone from The Handmaid’s Tale. While the first novel was powerful, bleak, and claustrophobic, its sequel is fast-paced, plot-driven and more optimistic. The Testaments more upbeat tone has led several critics to conclude that it is a less serious (i.e. important) work of literature. The harshest have even suggested that the author should have left well alone and resisted writing it altogether. Many other readers, however, have argued that the new novel is classic Atwood – powerful, witty, and incisive. This opinion was echoed by the 2019 Booker Prize judges, who declared The Testaments joint winner with Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other.

Plot Synopsis – The Handmaid’s Tale

With the success of the recent Hulu series of The Handmaid’s Tale, even diehard Atwood fans may be struggling to separate what happened in the original novel from what was invented for the TV show. There will also be readers who come straight to The Testaments without having read The Handmaid’s Tale. The following summary will tell you all you need to know.

The Handmaid’s Tale

Offred is the narrator of the novel. Her backstory is gradually revealed in the course of her narrative as she casts her mind back to earlier events.

Offred lives in the state of Gilead (formerly the United States). The USA ceased to exist after the assassination of the president and the massacre of Congress. These events were said to be the work of Islamic terrorists but were really the result of a military coup by the Sons of Jacob.

Gilead is a totalitarian republic. Exploiting rising fears about the dramatically declining birth rate, the Sons of Jacob erased women’s rights almost overnight, freezing their bank accounts, and forbidding them from undertaking paid work, holding property or reading. Fertile women were forced to become Handmaids, bearing children for the most powerful men and their Wives. Remaining women were classified into Marthas (household servants), Aunts (the instructors of Handmaids), and Unwomen (the old and those who resist authority).

Preaching a bastardised version of Puritanism, Gilead tolerates no other religious beliefs, persecuting Quakers, Catholics and Baptists, and forcing Jews to emigrate. Non-whites have been relocated to National Homeland One (North Dakota). Censorship