The Testaments is a cringey book that you can’t put down. The long awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments takes place in a not-too-distant future America, where the zealots have overthrown the US government and set up a religious totalitarian state. America, now Gilead, is a place where gender roles are strictly defined, and the men in power get to write all the definitions. Women are confined to their “rightful” place of home and family, no longer taught to read or allowed to have positions of responsibility, other than having children and maintaining their households.

Where Handmaid’s Tale focused on the horrors of the Handmaids, who served as sex slaves and wombs to the ruling Commanders, in The Testaments, the Handmaids are in the background. The peripheral characters of the first book (children, wives, maids “Marthas” and the nun-like “Aunts”) are the players here. The book weaves together the stories of three women; Daisy, an outsider from Canada; Agnes, of the first generation to be raised in Gilead; and the older Aunt Lydia who lived through the violent formation of Gilead to become one of the most powerful women in the new regime. Without spoiling the story I will just say that Atwood cleverly weaves together these women’s lives and the future of Gilead.

When I read the Handmaid’s Tale many years ago, during the Reagan/Bush era, the nascent anti-choice movement was emerging and the vision was frighteningly real. The Testaments emerges in the age of Trump and is equally dread-inducing. There is a very Trump-like Commander Judd, who kills off his young wives and collects child pornography, while torturing women for their improprieties. In passing we learn of Judd’s “National Homelands” campaign to promote whiteness. The various Commander’s wives, in the absence of meaningful work or education (only Aunts are taught to read) vie for power in the home, over the petty details of domestic life.

Agnes is the one pure character in the book, as she knows not of life beyond Gilead, cannot read, and rarely leaves home, other than to attend the sanctioned religious school for girls. Her transformation and bravery are a challenge to the reader. In the face of overwhelming opposition, will you stand up for what is right? Put your body on the line to help others? The Testaments is both a warning and a call for action that is hard to ignore.