They say never meet your heroes. The implication is that they won’t live up to your mental picture. That they might be narcissistic knobheads. I get that, I really do. But given the opportunity to meet Tom Hanks, or Gloria Steinem, or Captain Jean-Luc Picard (a girl can dream, okay?), I wouldn’t say no. I mean, would you? Don’t be daft. Of course you wouldn’t.
I haven’t actually met any of my heroes, but I have come close, twice, with one of them. I am referring to none other than the Queen of the North, Dame Margaret Atwood. Okay, so she’s not a Dame (but if we’re being pedantic, she’s not a queen either) but she is a Companion in the Order of Canada, which is essentially like being a member of the Queen’s court. But better, because you don’t have to engage in treasonous schemes to usurp control. Or was that just in the Tudor times?
The first time I ever saw Dame Atwood (let’s just accept this title as a done deal and move on) was actually here in York, when she came through on her 2016 book tour for Hag-Seed. A bit ironic that I had to move to another country to see her, but you do what you gotta do to get tickets to these things, am I right?
The second time wasn’t actually in person, but it was a live broadcast at City Screen, so it basically counts. When it’s one of your heroes, it counts. Yes, it was live streamed from the National Theatre in London to over 1,000 screens worldwide, but I’ll be telling everyone it was an intimate encounter. I mean, I was in the same country as the broadcast; none of my Canadian friends can say that, now can they?
So I’ll be honest, I’ve been weary of her new book, The Testaments. A sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, which was originally published in 1985, the book picks up fifteen years after we last saw Offred being loaded into a black van by her lover and baby-daddy, Nick. We don’t know if he’s friend or foe, and we never find out. Offred’s end is as haunting as her actual story.
If you’ve only watched the TV series, then you might be thinking I’m behind on my telly watching. I’m not. Offred’s story, in the book, ends with the finale of the first series. And before you chastise me for using the character’s handmaid name rather than her pre-Gilead name, know this (purist rant warning): Dame Atwood never reveals Offred’s birth name. She does this expressly to create a sense that any woman – me, your neighbour, your lawyer, your sister – could have been Offred. In fact, the book’s working title was simply Offred. Over the years, people have theorised about the character’s real name because of a brief section in the Red Centre, when characters exchange names. All the names save one become characters in the book – June.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back into Gilead with Dame Atwood. I was happy with the unsettling end. And I was happy to cling to the original tome as a formative building block of the feminist I am today. They say never meet your heroes, but they also say that most sequels are pale comparisons to the original work. Especially when a sequel was never planned and seems to come on the heels of an unexpected resurgence in the popular domain.
So hesitant was I about the new book, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go see the live broadcast. But I did, because she’s one of my heroes, and because my status as a Canadian required it.
And what a show it was. Readings from a two-time academy award winner and a Disney princess (Sally Hawkins and Lily James) – I mean, that’s pretty rock ‘n’ roll for a book launch. But the most impressive reading came right off the top of the event, when the imposing Ann Dowd (Aunt Lydia in the TV series) performed a reading from a chapter written in Aunt Lydia’s voice. She was terrifying, magical, and most importantly, the words she read were incredible. Disconcerting, off-putting, but incredible.
Then came Dame Atwood to the stage, handbag clutched under one arm, dressed in the shocking green of the book’s cover. Her monotone delivery always seems at odds with her passion, and she occasionally unsettled her British audience with her dry Canadian humour. But that’s what a literary magnate gets to do at the one of the biggest book launch events in history. She gets to unnerve her audience if that’s what amuses her. And you best believe she’s going to get political, because that’s her jam. Climate change, Trump, and the pervasive need to control women’s bodies and choices – the greatest political hits of our time. And Dame Atwood spoke straight to the core of the issues. She writes speculative fiction not to disturb, but because it’s real. It’s happening.
She concluded with evening with a reading of her own – from the poem Spelling, which, she told us, was the first seed of The Handmaid’s Tale, years before it took on the shape of Offred’s story. The line that always gives me pause is:
A word after a word after a word is power.
Sometimes we shouldn’t meet our heroes. But sometimes we should see them speak, to be reminded of why they made an impression on us in the first place, to remember that words can spark revolutions.
Needless to say, I can’t wait to crack my copy of The Testaments. I don’t think the Queen of the North will disappoint.
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