Summer Reads

Fiction

The Testaments

Margaret Atwood (Penguin Random House, $48)

In 1985, Margaret Atwood’s famously dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale introduced us to Gilead, a misogynistic theocracy in the former United States. Infertility is rife, so fertile, low-ranked women are co-opted as “handmaids” to breed for the powerful. The novel has been a cultural reference point for decades, but more recently the election of Donald Trump, the #metoo movement and especially the popular TV adaptation have propelled it into the mainstream. Joint 2019 Booker Prize winner The Testaments picks up the story 15 years after Offred (the original novel’s protagonist) steps into a van – and into the unknown. With three female narrators (including Aunt Lydia from The Handmaid’s Tale), the book fleshes out the world of Gilead and at least partially answers some important questions. The sequel is pacier than the original, with an air of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. It kept me up late. MH

Akin

Emma Donoghue (Macmillan, $35)

A retired, recently widowed chemistry professor is set to visit Nice, a city he left at the age of four to escape the war – shipped off to join his father in New York City while his mother stayed on in France. Now on the verge of 80, Noah knows if he doesn’t make his pilgrimage soon, he never will. However, just days from departure, he receives a call from the Administration for