A Lion Among Men - Gregory Maguire

   2008; 309 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book 3 (out of 4) in the “The Wicked Years” series.  Genres: Revisionist Fairy Tale; Fantasy; Fairy Tales.  Overall Rating : 5*/10.

 

    Let’s face it, in the classic movie The Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion gets portrayed in a pretty poor light.  He’s the King of the Beasts, yet he’d be the first one to tell you that he’s a chicken at heart.

 

    He joins up with Dorothy and her little troupe on the Yellow Brick Road as they journey to meet the Wizard of Oz.  The WOO (the Animals’ moniker for the Wizard) gives the Cowardly Lion a magic medal, promising that it will make him brave, but in reality, it has a placebo effect, because it turns out the Lion already was imbued with bravery.  He just needed to realize it.  What an idiot.

 

    But that’s just one side of the story.  Maybe the Cowardly Lion only thinks he’s a scaredy-cat.  Or maybe he’s a victim of a smear campaign, either by the Emerald City citizens or those pint-sized Munchkinlanders.

 

    It’s time to hear the other side of the story.

 

What’s To Like...

    A Lion Among Men is the third book in Gregory Maguire’s “The Wicked Years” series.  The first book, Wicked, was a fantastic success as a novel, a musical, and a soundtrack album.  I’ve been reading the series in order, but at a rate of about one book every six years or so.  Each book focuses on a different character from the world of Oz: Wicked retells the story of Elphaba Thropp, aka the “Wicked Witch of the West”.  Book 2, Son of a Witch, examines the life of a boy rumored to be Elphaba’s son, Liir.

 

    Now it’s the Cowardly Lion’s turn to grace the spotlight. His name is Brrr, and he knows next to nothing about his parents, clan, homeland, and early years.  He wanders all over the countryside, asking anyone he meets whether they might remember a stray lion cub.  For the most part, it's to no avail.

 

    Along his way, Brrr and the reader meet all sorts of interesting creatures.  Almost all of the animals talk, including Bears, Ocelots, Squirrels, Apes, and Boars.  But there are also Trolls, Dragons, Dwarves, and Tree Elves to cross paths with, as well as lots of humans.

 

    One of the two main storylines features Yackle, an incredibly old Maunt (aka “Nun”) who’s forgotten how to die.  As an “official court reporter” for the Emperor of Oz, Brrr is entitled to interview her, ostensibly looking for information as to the whereabouts of Elphaba and Liir.  However it turns out that Brrr has an ulterior motive.  The other main storyline doesn’t get started until around page 260, and it would be a spoiler to give any details.

 

    The ending is a mixed bag.  Some of the plot threads are tied up, such as Yackle’s.  At least I think hers is.  Others remain unresolved, presumably to be addressed in the next and final book in the series, Out of Oz, which resides on my Kindle.  I wouldn’t call A Lion Among Men a standalone story, although at the rate I’ve been reading these, for me it essentially was.  Methinks it would behoove me to read Book 4 in the not-too-distant future.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Come a cropper (v., phrase) : to suffer a defeat or disaster.

Others: Demimonde (n.); Put paid to (v., phrase); Haut monde (n., phrase).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 979 ratings and 359 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.32/5 based on 27,838 ratings and 2,037 reviews.

 

Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…

    “I’ll come with,” said the Squirrel succulently.  “Not if you value your nuts.”  (pg. 166)

 

Excerpts...

    “Do you know why the chicken crossed the road?”

    “Is this a joke?”

    Nothing was a joke to Dorothy.  “Because I was on the other side,” she finished.  “I was standing on one foot and singing a little song about, oh, I don’t know what.  And that brave little hen crossed the dangerous road to be with me.”

    “What happened to her?”

    “One Saturday night Uncle Henry wrung her neck and Auntie Em made chicken stew.  I cried and cried but actually she tasted pretty good.”  (pg. 159)

 

    One may, oh, cook poorly, or be socially graceless, or invest unwisely, or fail to achieve the best of personal hygiene.  But one doesn’t want to live wrong—from breath to breath, from start to finish, to get it wrong, so wrong, so fully wrong, that one has never had the glimmer of an idea that it might be better.  Or does one?  Maybe if you’re going to get it that wrong, it’s better to get it all wrong.  The proverbial stupid ant crawling on the hat brim of the prophet, eager only for the shade behind the prophet’s left ear, and ignorant of the civilization-altering sermon it is witnessing.  (pg. 194)

 

“Fate is only fate once it has happened.  Even our own deaths are only theoretical until we croak.”  (pg. 261)

    There are some quibbles.  The amount of cussing is low – I counted 8 instances in the first 20%, but it does include some f-bombs.  There are one or two rolls-in-the-hay, and a couple mentions of feminine cycles.

 

    One reviewer complained about the excessively flowery language, and there is at least one passage like that.  But I think Gregory Maguire was making a point there, and frankly, 99% of the text is easy to comprehend.

 

    There’s lots of extras at the start of the book: Ruling Family Trees, Oz’s recent history, and an excerpt from Brrr’s backstory.  Only the last one is worth your time, and it just gives a valuable hint as to how Brrr came to be, which is good to know as we tag along with him seeking information of his family tree.

 

    The biggest problem with A Lion Among Men is the slow pacing and lack of excitement.  The first three-quarters of the book is really just a lot of talking and zero action.  Given that the armies of “Loyal Oz” and the “Free State of Munchkinland” are itching to go to war, and that the mauntery (“nunnery”) where Brrr is interviewing Yackle lies in the direct path of both those armies, there was ample opportunity for some thrills and spills.  But it never happens.

 

    All of which made for a boring read.  Hopefully Out of Oz will be a lot more exciting.

 

    5 Stars.  As shown above, there’s a sizable disparity between the Amazon rating of A Lion Among Men and the Goodreads one.  In most cases, I’ve found that the latter’s score is the more accurate of the two.  Certainly its database (27,838 ratings) is a lot larger than Amazon’s (979 ratings).

Cover to Cover: What First-Time Authors Need to Know about Editing - Sandra Wendel

   2021; 215 pages.  Full Title: Cover to Cover: What First-Time Authors Need to Know About Editing - Insider Secrets Nobody Ever Tells You.   New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Editing Reference; Writing Reference; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    You’ve just finished putting the final touches on your first book!  You knew you had a story inside you, itching to get out, and now there it is!  On the paper right in front of you!

 

    You know the manuscript is perfect because you've read it a second time, and didn’t find anything mistakes – not even small ones like punctuation and grammar.

 

    But your Creative Writing teacher says the next step is Editing.  And you’ve never met anyone who goes around calling themselves an editor.

 

    Maybe your mom can edit it.  She’s one of your most enthusiastic beta-readers and says she thinks your manuscript is perfect as is, and that you should shop it around for someone to make it into a movie.

 

    Or maybe you should pick up Sandra Wendel’s latest book, Cover to Cover: What First-Time Authors Need to Know About Editing.

 

What’s To Like...

    Cover to Cover is divided into 3 parts, consisting of 15 chapters plus bonus stuff.  It’s a relatively short book, just 215 pages, but packed with vital information for any indie author.  The three parts are: I Just Wrote a Book: Now What?, I’m Ready for my Close-up, Mt. DeMille, and After the Edit: What Now?, but in a nutshell, they're witty labels for:

    What Editing entails

    What to do to get your book ready for editing

    What to do after your book's been edited.

 

    Of the fifteen chapters, my favorites were:

05. The Levels of Writing and Editing Explained Once and For All

09. Pet Peeves, Tigers, and Bugbears, Oh, My!

10. Beta Readers – Who They Are They Can Help You Make Your Book Better

14. Don’t Be That Author – A Short Course on Author/Editor Etiquette

Checklist for Authors to Fine-Tune a Manuscript Before Editing Begins.

 

    Some of the chapters are brief, but they all have depth.  For example, here's what the author calls "The Seven Levels of Writing and Editing", given in Chapter 5, listed from most intensive to least, all of which are fully explained:

    A. Book Coaching

    B. Collaborative Writing

    C. Developmental Editing (aka Content Editing)

    D. Editorial Evaluation or Assessment

    E. Line Editing

    F. Copy Editing

    G. Proofreading

 

    I enjoyed learning about the concept of “Book Coaching”; that was new to me.  I liked the tip about developing a ten-question list for Beta Readers, none of which is in the simple yes/no format.  It was sobering to learn that the average indie-published author sells about 300 copies of his work.  That’s all.    

 

    Along with all the helpful information, Sandra Wendel also weaves in just enough humor, to make the reading an easy task.  One example: What does the “N” on the University of Nebraska football helmets stand for?  Answer at the bottom of this review.

 

    Finally, like every other reader of Cover to Cover, I kept a sharp eye out for mistakes.  Can anything be more satisfying than finding typos in a book written by a professional editor?  I spotted four, then realized they had been deliberately placed by the author to make a point.  Outside of those, the book was error-free.  Bummer.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.7/5 based on 81 ratings and 47 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.26/5 based on 35 ratings and 16 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    This book is not about self-editing.  I don’t think you can edit your book yourself.  I don’t even edit my own books.  My mentor is my editor, and she’s tough.  She finds the inelegant phrasing and fixes my twisted logic and pushes me to say what I want to say simply.  She finds missing words, commas, misplaced modifiers, wrong words, and punctuation faux pas that authors don’t have to pay attention to when writing and then completely miss when we revise and revise again.  (loc. 222)

 

    Here is our editorial take on Karen authors: You hired a professional editor to perform a professional service.  Why not let us do what we do best and that’s to make you look fabulous, to help you create a commercial-quality book that can compete in a crowded marketplace?

    That said, I always tell authors this: You will win every disagreement we have.  Your opinion counts more than mine.  You can do whatever you wish with your book.  You decide the fate of your book.  (loc. 2162)

 

Kindle Details…

    Right now, Cover to Cover sells for $2.99 at Amazon.  Sandra Wendel has three other e-books available at Amazon; all of them are non-fiction, and all of them also priced $2.99.  Two of them are medical reference books, and have a co-author.  The third is a Kosher cookbook.

 

How do you know if your writing is effective?  Simple.  Readers understand what you have written.  (loc. 1457)

    Despite not being able to find any typos, there were a couple nits to pick.

    There were seven instances of cussing in the first half of the book.  That’s not excessive, and they didn’t offend me, but that’s still more than I’d expect in a non-fiction reference book.

 

    Also, the “Time Left in Chapter” function in the Kindle version was thoroughly skewed and therefore completely useless.  “1 Minute Left” could mean another half-hour remained in the chapter, but just as easily mean you’d be done as soon as you swiped to the next page.  Fortunately, I rarely rely on that Kindle estimate.

 

    A more serious gripe is with Chapter 4, “What Does Editing Cost?”  First-time indie authors will inevitably have no idea what a typical fee for editing will be, and this will probably be the first chapter they turn to.  Sandra Wendel correctly points out that it varies based on things like the number of pages, the depth of the editing, and the professional level of the editor.  But come on, there’s not even a rough estimate or a range given.

 

    I am not the target audience.  I am not a writer, nor do I have any aspirations to ever be one.  But I do some editing on the side, and I found Cover to Cover to be a treasure trove of information.  First-time authors may not know what to expect from someone editing their work, but that’s also true for part-time editors.  I highly recommend this book to any author, and any editor, who just wants to know what how the Author/Editor relationship works and what is entailed in self-publishing a book.

 

    9½ Stars.  Answer to the riddle: The “N” stands for “Knowledge”.  Full disclosure: the author is from the Midwest, so she is entitled to tell this joke.

Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen - H. Beam Piper

   1965; 215 pages.  Book 1 (out of 8) in the “Lord Kalvan” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Classic Sci-Fi; Multiverses.  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

 

    It had to be some sort of time-machine.  One minute Corporal Calvin Morrison of the Pennsylvania State Police was leading a raid on a farmhouse where an escaped murderer was holed up, the next minute some dude in a flying saucer popped up and zapped Calvin into some other time and place.

 

    Check that.  Some other time, obviously, but not some other place.  Calvin grew up in this area.  Things like trees and houses are different in the world he's been transported to, but the basic terrain – the mountains, cliffs, rivers, etc. – are still where they always were.

 

    So that flying saucer thingy must’ve been a time-machine.  The farmhouse he was sneaking up on has now disappeared, and Calvin finds himself alone, out in the sticks.  The first thing he needs to do is find some civilization – assuming it exists – and see what year it is.  Right now, he can’t tell whether he got zapped into the future or into the past.  Until he figures that out, he’ll call this place—

 

    Otherwhen.

 

What’s To Like...

    Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen was published in 1965, and was intended to be the start of a series featuring the then-newly hypothesized concept of multiverses.  The countless array of parallel worlds are monitored by the dimension-hopping Paratime Police, and they occasionally screw up.  Alas, the book was published posthumously, H. Beam Piper having taken his life a year earlier. The remaining seven more books in the series were written by John F. Carr, sometimes by himself, sometimes with a co-author.

 

    We follow Calvin, later dubbed Kalvan, as he acclimates to the world he’s just been dropped in.  He surmises correctly that he has little prospect of returning to his home world.  I liked that Calvin’s first order of business is to learn the local language.  No magic translating gizmos here.

 

    Otherwhen has attained a sword-and-musketry level of technology, where the key compound needed to fire projectiles, gunpowder, is in extreme demand.  The process to make the gunpowder is a carefully-guarded secret,  developed by a sinister quasi-religious group called Styphon’s House.  Luckily, Calvin apparently has a chemistry background and knows all about the three main ingredients needed to make gunpowder – sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter.  More luckily, Calvin knows a more powerful ratio of mixing those three components, much to the distress of Styphon’s House.

 

    The book felt well-researched to me for a 1960’s sci-fi novel.  Calvin may be in an alternate time-line, but the technology to make a metal ball explode out of the end of a musket is the same.  I also enjoyed the Eastern Pennsylvania setting: it’s H. Beam Piper’s home turf, and just north of where I grew up.

 

    The world-building shows its age in places.  Most notably, there’s a lot of smoking going on, without any social stigma.  Heroes do it, so do baddies.  Men do it, so do women.  Drinking is equally acceptable, and I was amused that the Paratime Police had developed a handy medication for dealing with hangovers for when they’re fraternizing with the natives on a parallel world.  It’s called the “First Level Alcodote-Vitamin Pills”.  The brief mention of the Pennsylvania Dutch and one of their signature dishes called “scrapple” resonated with me as well.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Antiphonally (adv.) : sung or played by two groups in turn.

Others: Nitriary (n.); Fluviatile (adj.); Auto-da-fé (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.7/5 based on 276 ratings and 94 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.20/5 based on 1,380 ratings and 58 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    The masters complained that the journeymen and apprentices were becoming intractable, meaning that they’d started thinking for themselves.  The peasants objected to having their byres invaded and their dunghills forked down, and to being put to unfamiliar work.  The landlords objected to having their peasants taken out of the fields, predicting that the year’s crop would be lost.

    “Don’t worry about that,” he told them.  “If we win, we’ll eat Gormoth’s crops.  If we lose, we’ll all be too dead to eat.”  (pg. 47)

 

    “Kalvan, this is General Klestreus, late of Prince Gormoth’s service, now of ours.”

    “And most happy at the change, Lord Kalvan,” the mercenary said.  “An honor to have been conquered by such a soldier.”

    “Our honor, General.  You fought most brilliantly and valiantly.”  He’d fought like a damned imbecile, and gotten his army chopped to hamburger, but let’s be polite.  (pg. 137)

 

 

“The gods would do what they wanted to without impertinent human suggestions.”  (pg. 173)

    The quibbles are minor and mostly inherent with any science-fiction work written in the 1940s-60s.

 

    There’s not a lot of cussing in Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, just nine instances in the first 50%.  When H. Beam Piper wants to simulate cussing, he often makes phrases up, usually based on the names of the local deities.  Some examples here are: “Dralm-dammit”, “Great Galzar!”, and “Galzar only knows!”  I love it when authors do this.

 

    The ending is okay, but way too convenient to be believable.  Everything goes just too perfectly for Kalvan and company.  But keep in mind that the target audience for sci-fi books in 1964 was teenage boys, who didn’t mind an ending lacking twists, as long as the white-hats triumphed.

 

    Lastly, it should be noted that there is lots of verbiage devoted to lots of battles. Even YA readers will most likely get tired of all the minutiae H. Beam Piper imparts to the fighting scenes.  Several other reviewers at Goodreads felt the same way.

 

    None of that kept me from enjoying Lard Kalvan of Otherwhen.  Writing a sci-fi tale set in multiverses surely was a groundbreaking task back then, and in that regard H. Beam Piper does an admirable job.  It may not be on  par with Star Wars or even the author’s Little Fuzzy novels, but it’s a better-than-average effort from the heyday of science-fiction.

 

    7 Stars.  Some plot threads remain unresolved at the end.  Calvin may be “Lord Kalvan”, but uneasy rests the head that wears the crown.  Styphon’s House has had its proverbial nose bloodied, but they are still very much a threat.  And the Paratime Police are certainly capable of tinkering with the time-line some more.  None of that is a criticism, though.  That’s why the rest of the series exists.

Those Barren Leaves - Aldous Huxley

    1925; 329 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Classic Literature; High-Brow Literature; Satire; Humorous Fiction.  Overall Rating: 7½*/10.

 

    Hey, everybody, let’s head on over to Mrs. Aldwinkle’s place for dinner tonight.  She owns a lovely old villa located in picturesque Vezza, Italy.  Knowing Mrs. Aldwinkle, the food will be sumptuous.

 

    Be sure to dress for the occasion.  Formal wear is de rigueur.  All the other guests will be similarly attired.  After supper, Mrs. Aldwinkle will offer to take you on a tour of the villa.  Do not refuse her!  Think of it as the price you’re paying for the meal.

 

    And for goodness sake, put on some hoity-toity airs!  In your walk, in your talk, and above all, in your interactions with the other guests.  We’re dining with the upper crust of society.  The guest list includes Miss Thriplow, Mr. Calamy, Mr. Cardan, Mr. Falx, Lord Hovendon, and Mrs. Aldwinkle’s niece, Irene.

 

    A guy named Francis Chelifer will also be there.  He’s new to the group, and a writer.  I don’t know how he got invited to dinner.  Rumor has it Mrs. Aldwinkle fished him out of the ocean.

 

What’s To Like...

    Those Barren Leaves is an early novel by Aldous Huxley, his third to be exact.  It is set in some unspecified time between the two World Wars and is Huxley’s biting satire about the pretensions sported by the upper echelons of British society: the intellectuals, the cultured, the rich, the famous.  They will try to overwhelm you with their opinions on lofty things like art, music, religion, and politics.  In the end, however, they are revealed to be no happier than us commoners.

 

    There is no single protagonist.  We follow most of the entourage mentioned above as they experience, and occasionally contemplate, their sad lives.  Some are desperate for love, at least one is desperate for money, all are desperate for admiration be their peers.

 

    The book is written in “British English”, not American, so us Yanks are treated to strange spellings such as grammes, pretence, mediaeval, loth, and Tchekov.  Aldous Huxley also weaves some Italian, French, German, and even Latin vocabulary into the story.  In that last tongue, I learned the phrase “hinc illae lacrimae”, which translates literally into “hence those tears”, and more freely into “that’s what tears are for”.

 

    But Huxley’s mastery of the native tongue is what really shines through here – dozens upon dozens of rare, archaic, or even obsolete words that somehow fit flawlessly into the text.  A couple are listed below, here are just a few of the rest: capripede, Wordsworthian, Casanovesque, ogival, congeries, cachinnating, wamblingly, Sphingine, niffy, and one of my favorites, amphisbaena.

 

    I liked the literary nod to Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt, which was published just three years earlier, as well as the discussion of the authorship of The Iliad.  Morris dancers and a popular board game called Halma were new to me, and I had no idea who Bossuet and Gene Stratton-Porter were.

 

    The book is divided into 5 parts, with a total of 42 chapters comprising 329 pages, which means the average length of a chapter is about 8 pages.  Most of it is written in the 3^rd-person point-of-view, but Part 2 and one chapter of Part 4 are in the 1^st-person, being excerpts from Francis Chelifer’s autobiography. Cussing was almost nonexistent, just two cases of “damned” in the first 50%.  Great writers don’t need cusswords.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Capripede (n.): one who has feet like that of a goat.

Others: Omphalokepsis (n.); and a zillion more.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.1/5 based on 34 ratings and 9 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.57/5 based on 710 ratings and 63 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Alas, it is true that I’ve never really been a successful parasite.  I could have been a pretty effective flatterer, but unfortunately I happen to live in an age when flattery doesn’t work.  I might have made a tolerably good buffoon, if I were a little stupider and a little more high-spirited.  But even if I could have been a buffoon, I should certainly have thought twice before taking up that branch of parasitism.  You may please for a time; but in the end you either bore of offend your patrons."  (loc. 463)

 

    Chelifer shook his head modestly.  “I am afraid,” he answered, I’m singularly stoical about other people’s sufferings.”

    “Why do you always speak against yourself?” asked Mrs. Aldwinkle earnestly.  “Why do you malign your own character?  You know you’re not what you pretend to be.  You pretend to be so much harder and dryer than you really are.  Why do you?”

    Chelifer smiled.  “Perhaps,” he said, “it’s to reestablish the universal average.”  (loc. 2822)

 

Kindle Details…

    Those Barren Leaves costs $2.99 at Amazon right now.  Several dozen other Aldous Huxley e-tomes are available, ranging in price from $2.99 to $13.49.  His most famous work, Brave New World, goes for $11.99, while my favorite, Ape and Essence, sells for $10.49.

 

We are all apt to value unduly those things which happen to belong to us.  (loc. 266)

    I read and reviewed Aldous Huxley’s debut novel, Crome Yellow, a couple years ago.  It was published in 1921; the review is here.  The two books are similar in content, style, and weaknesses.

 

   The writing style in both is superlative, but both suffer from PWP Syndrome, “Plot, What Plot?”  The nice way of describing that is that Those Barren Leaves is character-driven.  The blunt way is to say that nothing happens.

 

    That also means there’s very little in the way of an ending.  None of our characters finds happiness. A couple of them are contemplating marriage, but it is a near certainty that those relationships won’t last.  One has turned to meditation to attain enlightenment, but thus far has achieved nothing.  Hinc illae lacrimae.

 

    In the hands of a lesser writer, this would’ve been a complete waste of my reading time.  But thanks to Huxley’s writing skills, I still found this a witty and incisive read.  No, it’s not on the same level as Brave New World, which is where I suggest anyone new to this author should start, but fans of Aldous Huxley – and I am one of those – will still enjoy Those Barren Leaves.

 

    7½ Stars.  I try to read at least one highbrow novel each year.  That's a lofty goal, and some years I fail to reach it.  But I think Those Barren Leaves qualifies in this category, and I am going to check that goal off my 2022 bucket list.

The Testaments - Margaret Atwood

    2019; 415 pages.  Book 2 (out of 2) in the series “The Handmaid’s Tale”.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Dystopian Fiction; Banned Books.  Laurels: 2019 Booker Prize (winner); British Book Awards 2020 Fiction Book if the Year (shortlisted).  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

 

    Meet Daisy.  She’s a young girl growing up in Eastern Canada.  Her mother and father own a second-hand clothing store, which does enough business to make ends meet.  Canada has a pretty enlightened view of women, unlike the fractured United States to the south, one part of which is now a theocracy called Gilead, right across the nearby border.  Daisy’s life is a happy one.

 

    Meet Agnes.  She lives in Gilead.  She has a mother, Tabitha, who loves her very much, and a father, Commander Kyle, who is more aloof.  But he’s a “Commander” which is a very prestigious position, and that carries over into Agnes at school, where all her (female) classmates want to be her friend.  Agnes’s life is a happy one.

 

    Meet Aunt Lydia.  She runs a place called Ardua Hall, which is a “Finishing School for Girls” in Gilead, close to where Agnes lives.  Aunt Lydia has a team of other Aunts under her, and is just about as powerful as any woman in Gilead is allowed to be.  Aunt Lydia’s life is a happy one, at least as long as nobody, male or female, discovers her little secrets.

 

    None of the three females know each other when the story opens.  But they will eventually meet up.  By which time none of them will be very happy anymore.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Testaments is Margaret Atwood’s sequel to her fantastic 1985 bestseller The Handmaid’s Tale, which I read for National Banned Books Week in 2014 and is reviewed here.  The book is written the first-person-POV, and switches among the three aforementioned protagonists in no particular order.

 

    If you’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale, you‘re acquainted with the dystopian conditions that Aunt Lydia and Agnes are subject to.  Nothing has changed in The Testaments, which takes place fifteen years later.  The same female hierarchies are in effect: Wives, Aunts, Marthas, and Handmaids.  But here the Aunts are in the spotlight, not the Handmaids.

 

    I liked that the “Canada versus Gilead” contrast of how women are treated is examined here.  Margaret Atwood is Canadian by birth, and her national pride shows through, not just on the feminism issue, but also on things like global warming and climate science.  At one point Daisy goes to an anti-Gilead rally, and I chuckled at a placard there which read “GILEAD WANTS US TO FRY!”

 

    Unsurprisingly, the book is written in “Canadian”, which is kind of a hybrid between British English and American English.  So you meet the usual weird spellings such as favourite, grey, and moulded (plus an article of clothing called a “waterproof”), but also more familiar ones like realized and judgment.

 

    It was fun to learn a bit more about the storyline’s “history”.  Gilead is primarily centered in the New England area of the US.  Texas has broken off to become an independent republic, and California seems to have done likewise.  There was a conflict dubbed the “War on Manhattan” a few years earlier, and Gilead is currently struggling to maintain sufficient manpower and money to wage war somewhere along its borders.

 

    Easter traditions in Gilead have been scaled back, in contrast to other parts of the world where Easter’s pagan roots are now rightfully celebrated.  That November holiday is now two words: “Thanks Giving”, and lest you think that only women are treated brutally in Gilead, you are invited to watch the next Particicution.

 

    There are 71 chapters in The Testaments, plus an Epilogue; which means the chapters average just under six pages in length.  Although I’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale, and highly recommend it, I don’t think you necessarily have to read it before tackling The Testaments.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 30,455 ratings and 3,606 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.20/5 based on 304,150 ratings and 28.261 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Liminal Space (n.) : physical spaces between one destination and the next.

 

Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…

    “Not for nothing do we at Ardua Hall say “Pen Is Envy”.  (pg. 140)

 

Excerpts...

    We weren’t supposed to have best friends.  It wasn’t nice to form closed circles, said Aunt Estée: it made other girls feel left out, and we should all be helping one another be the most perfect girls we could be.

    Aunt Vidala said that best friends led to whispering and plotting and keeping secrets, and plotting and secrets led to disobedience to God, and disobedience led to rebellion, and girls who were rebellious became women who were rebellious, and a rebellious woman was even worse than a rebellious man because rebellious men became traitors, but rebellious women became adulteresses.  (pg. 24)

 

    “You had an abortion,” he said.  So they’d been rifling through some records.

    “Only one,” I said fatuously.  “I was very young.”

    He made a disapproving grunt.  “You are aware that this form of person-murder is now punishable by death?  The law is retroactive.”

    “I was not aware of that.”  I felt cold.  But if they were going to shoot me, why the interrogation?

    “One marriage?”

    “A brief one.  It was a mistake.”

    “Divorce is now a crime,” he said.  I said nothing.  (pg. 171)

 

The ability to concoct plausible lies is a talent not to be underestimated.  (pg. 387)

    The nitpicks in The Testaments are few.  Some readers found the switching around among three narrators confusing, but in the hardcover version I read, there’s an icon at the start of each chapter that identifies who’s writing it.

 

    The cussing is sparse, only 12 instances in the first half of the book, although it seemed to pick up a bit in the second half, and there were one or two references to male genitalia and female fertility cycles.

 

    For me, the ending was adequate, but not spectacular.  The plan hatched by the good guys is risky, but it goes off pretty much as planned.  The biggest threat turns out to be Mother Nature, not those in power in Gilead.  The Epilogue, consisting of the historical notes from a Symposium held even further in the future and drawing conclusions from examining the records about the events in the book, didn’t impress me.

 

    What would impress me much more is an announcement that a third book in this series was in the works, but I don't think that's going to happen.

 

    9½ Stars.  Let’s not get bogged down in the nitpicking.  The Testaments is a fantastic book, every bit as good, and frightening, as The Handmaid’s Tale.  We live in a nation that has just declared abortion to be a crime, and there are proposals to throw doctors who perform them, and women who get them, into jail.

 

    We are not far from finding ourselves in a Gilead theocracy.