Margaret Atwood: The Testaments

ALSO BY MARGARET ATWOOD

NOVELS

The Edible Woman

Surfacing

Lady Oracle

Life Before Man

Bodily Harm

The Handmaid’s Tale

Cat’s Eye

The Robber Bride

Alias Grace

The Blind Assassin

Oryx and Crake

The Penelopiad

The Year of the Flood

MaddAddam

The Heart Goes Last

Hag-Seed

SHORTER FICTION

Dancing Girls

Murder in the Dark

Bluebeard’s Egg

Wilderness Tips

Good Bones and Simple Murders

The Tent

Moral Disorder

Stone Mattress

POETRY

Double Persephone

The Circle Game

The Animals in That Country

The Journals of Susanna Moodie

Procedures for Underground

Power Politics

You Are Happy

Selected Poems: 1965–1975

Two-Headed Poems

True Stories

Interlunar

Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New, 1976–1986

Morning in the Burned House

Eating Fire: Selected Poetry, 1965–1995

The Door

NONFICTION

Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature

Days of the Rebels 1815–1840

Second Words

Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature

Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing

Moving Targets: Writing with Intent 1982–2004

Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing

Writing with Intent: Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose 1983–2005

Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth

In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination

FOR CHILDREN

Up in the Tree

Anna’s Pet (with Joyce Barkhouse)

For the Birds

Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut

Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes

Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda

Wandering Wenda

GRAPHIC NOVELS

Angel Catbird

The Handmaid’s Tale

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2019 by O.W. Toad, Ltd.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

www.nanatalese.com

Doubleday is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC. Nan A. Talese and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Cover illustration © Noma Bar / Dutch Uncle

Cover design © Suzanne Dean

Art by Suzanne Dean

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019940775

ISBN 9780385543781 (hardcover)

EBOOK ISBN 9780385543798

v5.4

ep

“Every woman is supposed to have the same set of motives, or else to be a monster.”

—GEORGE ELIOT,

DANIEL DERONDA

“When we look one another in the face, we’re neither of us just looking at a face we hate—no, we’re gazing into a mirror….Do you really not recognize yourselves in us…?”

—OBERSTURMBANNFÜHRER LISS TO OLD BOLSHEVIK MOSTOVSKOY, VASILY GROSSMAN,

LIFE AND FATE

“Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake….It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one.”

—URSULA K. LE GUIN,

THE TOMBS OF ATUAN

CONTENTS

Cover

Also by Margaret Atwood

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

I

:

Statue

II

:

PRECIOUS FLOWER

III

:

Hymn

IV

:

THE CLOTHES HOUND

V

:

Van

VI

:

SIX FOR DEAD

VII

:

Stadium

VIII

:

CARNARVON

IX

:

Thank Tank

X

:

SPRING GREEN

XI

:

Sackcloth

XII

:

CARPITZ

XIII

:

Secateurs

XIV

:

ARDUA HALL

XV

:

Fox and Cat

XVI

:

PEARL GIRLS

XVII

:

Perfect Teeth

XVIII

:

READING ROOM

XIX

:

Study

XX

:

BLOODLINES

XXI

:

Fast and Thick

XXII

:

HEARTSTOPPER

XXIII

:

Wall

XXIV

:

THE

NELLIE J. BANKS

XXV

:

Wakeup

XXVI

:

LANDFALL

XXVII

:

Sendoff

The Thirteenth Symposium

Acknowledgements

About the Author

I

Statue

The Ardua Hall Holograph

1

Only dead people are allowed to have statues, but I have been given one while still alive. Already I am petrified.

This statue was a small token of appreciation for my many contributions, said the citation, which was read out by Aunt Vidala. She’d been assigned the task by our superiors, and was far from appreciative. I thanked her with as much modesty as I could summon, then pulled the rope that released the cloth drape shrouding me; it billowed to the ground, and there I stood. We don’t do cheering here at Ardua Hall, but there was some discreet clapping. I inclined my head in a nod.

My statue is larger than life, as statues tend to be, and shows me as younger, slimmer, and in better shape than I’ve been for some time. I am standing straight, shoulders back, my lips curved into a firm but benevolent smile. My eyes are fixed on some cosmic point of reference understood to represent my idealism, my unflinching commitment to duty, my determination to move forward despite all obstacles. Not that anything in the sky would be visible to my statue, placed as it is in a morose cluster of trees and shrubs beside the footpath running in front of Ardua Hall. We Aunts must not be too presumptuous, even in stone.

Clutching my left hand is a girl of seven or eight, gazing up at me with trusting eyes. My right hand rests on the head of a woman crouched at my side, her hair veiled, her eyes upturned in an expression that could be read as either craven or grateful—one of our Handmaids—and behind me is one of my Pearl Girls, ready to set out on her missionary work. Hanging from a belt around my waist is my Taser. This weapon reminds me of my failings: had I been more effective, I would not have needed such an implement. The persuasion in my voice would have been enough.

As a group of statuary it’s not a great success: too crowded. I would have preferred more emphasis on myself. But at least I look sane. It could well have been otherwise, as the elderly sculptress—a true believer since deceased—had a tendency to confer bulging eyes on her subjects as a sign of their pious fervour. Her bust of Aunt Helena looks rabid, that of Aunt Vidala is hyperthyroid, and that of Aunt Elizabeth appears ready to explode.