The Testaments: The Sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

The collective memory is notoriously faulty, and much of the past sinks into the ocean of time to be drowned forever; but once in a while the waters part, allowing us to glimpse a flash of hidden treasure, if only for a moment.

When she passed the material along to me for evaluation, I was very excited by it, since first-hand narratives from Gilead are vanishingly rare—especially any concerning the lives of girls and women. It is hard for those deprived of literacy to leave such records.

In my end is my beginning, as someone once said. Who was that? Mary, Queen of Scots, if history does not lie.

history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

The handwriting is legible to those trained in archaic cursive;

She smelled right. It was like an echo, of a voice you can’t quite hear.

The ability to concoct plausible lies is a talent not to be underestimated.

In our profession, one mysterious box, when opened, so often conceals another.

Some historians have even argued that persons of that age are especially suitable for such escapades, as the young are idealistic, have an underdeveloped sense of their own mortality, and are afflicted with an exaggerated thirst for justice.