Tag: the handmaid’s tale

Beloved Author Graeme Gibson Passes At 85

Canadian author and conservationist Graeme Gibson passed away on Wednesday, September 18th at the age of 85 due to dementia. The announcement was made by Gibson’s publisher, Penguin Random House Canada.

 

Image Via Georgia Straight

 

Gibson is known for writing experimental fiction novels such as Five Legs and Communion, both centering around the character Felix Oswald and his dark, twisted coming-of-age adventures. An avid bird watcher, Gibson also wrote collections based on his bird watching, his most well-known being The Bedside Book of Birds.

 

 

Gibson was the longtime partner of Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale and the recently released The Testaments. Even though he was suffering from dementia, he still joined Atwood on her book promotion tour.

In an interview with Time magazine, Atwood said that she wrote The Testaments while caring for Gibson.

 

Image Via Glob Intel

 

Are you sad to hear about Gibson’s death?

 

 

Featured Image Via CBC

 

 

Praise Be! ‘The Testaments’ Is Coming To Television

 

 

Releasing today, Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments continues the story of The Handmaid’s Tale with new characters exploring the world of Gilead for a new generation of readers. With rave reviews and a huge following thanks to the successful series on Hulu, the hype surrounding this new novel has reached new heights. For those fans who are anxious for an eventual adaptation, you don’t have to wait any longer.

 

Image Via Amazon

 

Hulu has confirmed that a series based on The Testaments is in the works, just as the series starts to prepare for it’s upcoming fourth season.

In addition to the new series, the showrunner of Handmaid’s has stated that the show will incorporate elements of The Testaments into the current show.

 

 

MGM, the production company for The Handmaid’s Tale, is more than ready to bring Atwood’s newest story to life:

 

“Margaret Atwood is a literary icon who continues to delight and challenge readers through her provocative and compelling prose. She has been an incredible creative partner and resource to MGM throughout the production of Handmaid’s and we look forward to working with her on the story’s exciting next chapter.”

 

Are you excited for an adaptation of The Testaments?

 

 

Featured Image Via Penguin Books

Amazon Sends Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Testaments’ Early by Mistake

Amazon preorders of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments have been shipped out to readers ahead of schedule. By mistake.

A handful of reviews appeared on NPR, The Washington Post, and The New York Times yesterday even though there was supposed to be a strict embargo on the novel before its September 10th release date. And some readers are rushing to Twitter and Instagram to show off the copies they’ve received early.

 

 

 

According to BBC, Penguin Random House claims:

In the US a very small number of copies of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments were distributed early due to a retailer error which has now been rectified.

We appreciate that readers have been waiting patiently, in some cases for more than thirty years, for the much-anticipated sequel to the bestselling The Handmaid’s Tale. In order to ensure our readers around the world receive their copies on the same day, our global publication date remains Tuesday 10th September.

The small number of copies received by these lucky readers total around eight-hundred.

Though some Atwood fans may be celebrating that they could get their hands on The Testaments early, many independent booksellers are frustrated that Amazon seems to have ignored the embargo. The fact that readers have received copies ahead of schedule from Amazon can drastically impact an independent bookstore’s bottom line, especially when they rely on the rush of first-day sales to drive their business.

 

 

Lexi Beach, one such bookseller whose “world is crumbling around [her] right now,” took to Twitter to vent about Amazon’s brazen disregard  of the embargo.

 

 

Unfortunately, Beach is kind of right. Amazon’s business model is much different from your average independent bookseller’s. The online-shopping behemoth can afford to take a lot of losses on titles like The Testaments in a strategy to grow their customer base. Independent stores, on the other hand, often rely on the buzz huge titles like Atwood’s generate to drive business to their stores. And given that Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale has been shortlisted for The Booker Prize and is already on many best-selling lists based on preorders alone, the fact that Amazon can shamelessly violate the embargo all booksellers had to sign is made even more disheartening and terrifying.

 

 

Paul Swydan, owner of Silver Unicorn Books, also took to Twitter to express his frustration:

 

 

Penguin Random House released a statement regarding the incident. However, they didn’t address Amazon by name, preferring to keep things vague.

 

 

Understandably, the independent booksellers Amazon continues to undercut are still angry and worried Amazon won’t be held accountable. After all, what can you actually do to affect the site that controls roughly 50% of book sales in the world. Even a publisher the size of Penguin Random House can’t really afford to tarnish their relationship with Amazon. Beach noted in another tweet that PRH could delay shipments of future releases to Amazon to prevent them from capitalizing on first-day sales. That’s the typical way smaller booksellers are disciplined, but who knows if PRH will or even can use those methods with Amazon.

 

 

Featured image via My Office Magazine and Instagram: @damagedbutinvigorated

Here’s What We Know about ‘The Testaments’

The Testaments, the highly-anticipated sequel to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale earned its spot on the Booker Prize list earlier this week. And despite the fact that The Testaments is going to get a 500,000 copy first print run, there’s been a strict embargo up until now. However, a flurry of reviews came out just last night. So here at Bookstr, we’re breaking down everything we know about The Testaments right here.

 

Image via BBc

 

First off, we know the sequel is set fifteen years after the events of The Handmaid’s Tale. The original The Handmaid’s Tale is set in a near-future New England, and it tells the story of Offred, a woman forcibly assigned to produce children for the ruling class of men of a theocratic military regime that’s overthrown the U.S. government.

The Testaments, on the other hand, centers around three characters: Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia. From Danielle Kurtzleben’s review for NPR:

Agnes, a girl in Gilead who from a young age rejects marriage, though her parents intend to marry her to a powerful Commander. Daisy is a Canadian girl repulsed by Gilead, raised by strangely overprotective parents. And Aunt Lydia — yes, that Aunt Lydia — has near-godlike status as one of Gilead’s founding Aunts and spends her days quietly collecting dirt on Commanders and fellow Aunts.

In an interesting turn of events, it seems Aunt Lydia might not be quite the cheerleader she was made out to be in The Handmaid’s Tale. Now that readers get to see Lydia from a different perspective, it seems they’ll get to see a completely different side of her.

 

Image via Daily Express

 

The Testaments‘ plot is NOT connected to the television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale. The original book, published in 1985, ends roughly where the events of the first season of the adaptation ends. But the Hulu series has pressed on beyond Atwood’s original story. While Atwood’s new novel and the TV series might not be too connected, Atwood builds on key events from the series in the construction of her follow-up — specifically, the foundation that June has laid for the fall of Gilead.

Atwood further expands on the world of Gilead she created nearly thirty-five years earlier. In The Testaments, readers will learn about the Pearl Girls, the Aunt training program in which young girls are sent abroad as missionaries wearing fake pearls. Readers will also discover more about Gilead’s unsettling marriage customs and how the Aunt program even got started.

 

 

In an interview with Atwood for Time magazine, Lucy Feldman writes:

[Atwood] sees her role as the person who drops a flare on the highway — she wrote the new book in part because she worries the world is trending more toward Gilead than away from it.

While no one can be sure of what the future holds, one can’t deny Atwood’s fiction about Gilead has taken on a new light in recent years. And one thing is for sure: Atwood’s The Testaments is sure to shock and inspire as much as The Handmaid’s Tale continues to today. There’s already an excerpt you can read right now! Seriously, do yourself a favor and check out this first look at The Testaments. You can even listen to Atwood herself reading it!

 

 

Featured image via The Guardian