Margaret Atwood is writing her own damn sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale
Aux Features The Handmaid's TaleHulu’s grim, affecting The Handmaid’s Tale was renewed for a third season this past May, but it now appears the dispiriting realm of Gilead will roll on off the screen as well. Margaret Atwood, who penned the award-winning tome upon which the series is based, announced on Wednesday morning that she’s got her own sequel in the works. Called The Testaments, it will be set 15 years after the end of the first novel and published in September of 2019.
“Yes indeed to those who asked: I’m writing a sequel to The #HandmaidsTale,” Atwood wrote on Twitter. “#TheTestaments is set 15 years after Offred’s final scene and is narrated by three female characters. It will be published in Sept 2019.”
Accompanying it is a short clip setting a quote from Atwood against some glitchy atmospherics. “Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything!” it reads. “The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”
See it below:
Set in a dystopian future where the U.S. has been refashioned as a totalitarian and theocratic country called Gilead, the story follows a band of women, dubbed “handmaids,” who are enslaved and exploited for their fertility. Atwood herself credits the 1985 novel’s modern success with the rise of the Trump presidency and what many deem to be an regressive, anti-women agenda, and the global trend of women donning the series’ signature garb to protests is evidence enough to show she’s not wrong.
Atwood doesn’t mention whether or not the series itself will impact the events of her novel, but, for us viewers, it’s probably best to do what we’ve already learned to do with Game Of Thrones, which is view the books and the series as two separate tellings of the same story.
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I hope it will be titled: The Handmaid’s Tale 2: Everything’s Great Now.Because I don’t think I can handle any more dystopian fiction right now…
Dystopia for most, utopia for some, and tiny American flags for all! (Caravan not included)
The Legend of Ofglen’s Gold
Slate made basically the same joke:“The Handmaid’s Tale: The Legend of Offred’s Gold? Dark of the Maid? Gilead Drift?”
eh, everytime there’s a sequel thread on AVC, I go with City Slickers.
I think “Electric Boogaloo” is the more frequently used sequel subtitle.
The Handmaid’s Tale 2: Who’s Asking Me To Prom?
The Handmaid’s Tale, Two, Too Many Handmaids.
Whenever I reread Handmaids Tale, I can’t read fiction again for a few months. It just ruins me. Same with Never Let MD Go.
Nobody’s offered “Too Handmaid, Too Tale” yet?
Y’all are slipping.
Yeah, surprise happy ending! Not really in Atwood’s wheelhouse, though.
The Handmaid’s Tale 2: Electric Boogaloo!
The Handmaid’s Tale 2: Patriarchal Pool Party
The Handmaid’s 2: Mall Cop and it’ll take place in the 80’s and be about Roy Moore.
Handmaid’s Tale 2: Electric Boogaloo Handmaid’s Tale 2: Tokyo Drift
The Handmaid’s Tail
2 Hands 2 Maids 2 Much!
I can’t handle anymore dystopian reality right now.
The Handmaid’s Tale 2: The Next Generation… Is Literally Entirely The Product Of Institutionalised Rape Shit We Probably Should Have Gamed Out The Implications Of This Especially The Way Every Citizen Has To Deal With Finding Out That Their Mother Isn’t Really Their Mother At Some Point Unless We Can Suppress That But What With The Famine It’s Just So Hard To Concentrate
Great! See you back here in a year for the io9 hot take review, Atwood Continues to Centre Cis White Feminism in Handmaid Sequel; Not Racist Enough.
I liked the afterward to the novel, which (SPOILERS) recounts the obvious – that such a society could not endure for long. Rounds of purges of the leadership ranks and the country’s isolation eventually led it to topple under its own weight. And the infertility issue was due to an illness that mostly made men sterile rather than women infertile.
I’ve read the novel several times and it’s one of my favorites (and I still haven’t read any other Atwood because I’m an idiot). I can’t remember, for some reason, if the last section is specifically dated as to how many years after Offred’s life it’s written.But…! It sure wasn’t a short period, and the exploration of events after the ones Offred lives through, especially in other regions, could be fascinating. Atwood has any number of ways she could go with a sequel (and jeez, it’s not like she hasn’t written sequels).I haven’t seen the series, because no Hulu. But I did like the 1990 movie. So there.
There’s plenty summarized in that epilogue to chew on in a sequel for sure. I got the impression Gilead lasted for maybe 30 years, but during that period you had waves of political executions because things weren’t getting better so ever-more zealous kept seizing power while the country starved itself of resources. I think the transcription of Offred’s cassette tapes wasn’t for nearly 200 years.
I think the transcription of Offred’s cassette tapes wasn’t for nearly 200 years. Yeah, I really liked the history part of that – the scholars searching for who Offred was, trying to find her by narrowing down who had the Commander rank and lived in the right kind of house or town during the time they thought she might be from.Honestly, the more I think about this sequel the more excited I am for it. I really hope Atwood’s been working on it for awhile… I mean, I can wait if I have to. Be fun if it wasn’t years though.
I have read a lot of Atwood and liked some of it. I can recommend The Blind Assassin and Alias Grace. Oryx and Crake and its sequel depressed the hell out of me.There’s also a film of Alias Grace on Netflix (Canadian production, natch) which is just completely fucking awesome.
I don’t have Hulu either because I already subscribe to premium cable, Netlfix, and Amazon Prime. My friends keep telling me to get the 30 day trial and then quit so I can watch The Handmaid’s Tale, but I know that I’ll forget to cancel and end up paying for a year. So there’s that.
professional victims everywhere rejoice
I look forward to the outraged Jezebel piece claiming Atwood isn’t woke enough to write a sequel to her own book.
Just stop reading Jezebel and ignore the outrage. I have AVC booked marked and regularly check in on Gizmodo and LifeHacker (and occasionally Splinter and Jalopnik–even though I am not a car person but can appreciate the article. But Jezebel just pisses me off, and this is coming from a staunch feminist.
1). I’m glad actual feminists hate Jezebel too. Makes me feel like I’m on the right side.2). It would be soooo much easier to ignore Jezebel/The Root/Other Insanity if the AVC didn’t repost stories from those outlets on their page, or have that infernal “You May Also Like” window on the side.
The sooner somebody purchases the AVC from those Univision turkeys, the better.
If we each put in $100 bucks…
I don’t know what I’m looking forward to more: The countless MRA’s and right wing thinkpieces decrying it has a terrible piece of fiction, misandrist, or saying that it’s already happening and not in America and women should shut up, OR the countless feminist woke thinkpieces that decry it as not going far enough, or that it doesn’t address something, or it isn’t feminist enough.
Neither of which group will actually, you know… read the book.
Well the important part is you get to feel superior to everyone else.
I can’t speak for Mr. Neekburm, but I expect the exact same thing and I wouldn’t say it makes me feel superior so much as tired and sad.
Maybe they’ll do what Breitbart did with Black Panther and say it actually supports everything they believe in. And yup that really happened.
Or the depressing likelihood that we’ll read it and go “meh, it’s not Go Set A Watchman bad, though that was the result of a very particular and somewhat distressing set of circumstances, but like…
…it’s almost as if the original was written by an angry 80s-era feminist at the top of her game, and this new one was written by a rich and increasingly batty octogenarian who doesn’t personally really have anything to complain about, re life and personal autonomy and whatnot…
…also the chapter where the UN finds Waterford not guilty of rape, and so June writes an op ed in the Daily Ranter about how therefore he should not have been fired by the Gilead High Council, seems really counter to the character in the original……also that part early on where it goes ‘I am a true feminist,’ said June, oh shit I mean Offred no wait her identity was supposed to be deliberately vague I forgot silly me forget my own head if it wasn’t screwed on’was way too post-modern which made it seem old-fashioned.”
The first season was grim and affecting. The second season was frustrating and meandering.
For me, the first season suffered mostly because I kept on comparing the show to the book in my head. Season two’s ending was awful, but at least they were able to finally break free of the source material.
Yes, I admit it must be hard to continue this on from the source material, but there was a lot of wheel spinning and false starts. It felt like they were fishing a direction to go in a lot of the time. They went to the well a few to many times with the making Offred crack then become strong then crack then become strong cycles, too. Like I said,I know it’s hard to write a character going through this type of trauma but they nailed it so well the first season.
Same here. I ended up bailing on the second season after the let’s-help-the-birth-along-the-old-way scene. It seemed to double down on the torture and horror in a way that felt exploitative, rather than, “This shit is happening somewhere in the world right now”.
I kind of felt that way about a few things, too. This story is inherently horrific and you don’t want to shy away from it, but they also veer into scenes that just feels like misery porn for the sake making sure you feel shitty after every episode.
It’ll be very similar to the first novel, but this time Atwood will make sure to tell us what on-the-nose pop song was playing at every moment of these women’s lives.
Yeah whoever decided on the popular music used in that didn’t do the best job. Perhaps they should talk with the person who ends up doing that for everyone. I can’t recall her name right now, but the shows that use that the best I always notice it ends up being her.
Well I loved her recent Oryx & Crake books, so I’m looking forward to it. Like Handmaid’s Tale and Cat’s Eye, O&C took a while to rev up for me, but damn, sticking with it really paid off.
Honestly, it’s a little arrogant of Atwood to think that her sequel can possibly be as compelling as Trump’s ongoing prequel.
It’d be pretty neat if it was after the revolutionary coup that overthrows Gilead, and we see the demise of it (and the unfortunate persistence of sexism beyond it) from the perspective of three different women (a former Handmaid like Offred, one of the elites like Serena Joy now facing judgment and execution, and a black woman returning from the “National Homelands” in the Midwest).
This may or may not have been Atwood’s intention, but I got a strong sense that the “National Homelands” were a lie, and that POC were just being exterminated. It would fit. Atwood has said many times that there is nothing in her novel that has not been done IRL at some point in our history.
That could have been the implication, although I read them basically as “slave camps”. The whole “Children of Ham” thing was straight out of antebellum pro-slavery arguments as to why the black slaves deserved slavery.
The Handmaid’s Tale 2: Theocratic Boogaloo
this is where I get to repost the best review of The Handmaid’s Tale, right?http://exiledonline.com/old-exile/vault/books/review103.html
Atwood herself credits attributes the 1985 novel’s modern success with to the rise of the Trump presidency and what many deem to be an regressive, anti-women agendaUnless you really meant that Atwood believes that her book was the cause of the Trump presidency, in which case, weird, but okay.
Kind of depressing, but everyone deserves to make money from their work, and if she thinks she needs more, she should go for it. The ending of the first one was fairly definitive, as I recall, but the timeline never made any sense anyway. The main character in the book remembers the transition to complete and established totalitarianism in her lifetime; it was… an abrupt and vague transition. In the book’s defense, perhaps it was intended to be an unreliable recollection, or a character that didn’t know how bad it really was when she was young. In some ways I like that interpretation. But I’ve always thought it was a stretch to leap from ‘I had a normal childhood in America’ to ‘there has been a religious fundamentalist takeover and now the country is called Gilead and it enslaves women as an institution’. The contrast is powerful, but makes it tough for strict realism. But in any event, it’s pretty malleable terrain. Will lend itself nicely to a profitable YA dystopia series, if she’d like to retire wealthy.
Love the Atwood. I keep hearing about the HBO series based on Maddaddam, so where is it?