NaNoWriMo 2020

 What in the world... it's October 31st already! NaNoWriMo is less than 12 hours away! Luckily, I have actually been thinking about NaNo 2020 for quite some time, have registered on the website, have even donated for the greater good, but I hadn't actually blogged about doing all that. Time to amend this. (Last year my post came at the end of September, so maybe this is just making up for my earliness (is this a word?) then).
It is strange to think NaNo really is around the corner, especially in this weird corona year when time seems to go a lot faster than usual, although nothing much happens or changes over the cause of the days or weeks. You'd think finding time to write 50,000 words is going to be really easy, but if finding the time to blog about it is already hard, that may not really be the case... As I say every year; we shall see how that goes.

The good news is; I actually have a plan! I have a theme, a main character, some character development, several other characters, and a plot. I have even gone as far as to buy myself a whiteboard, coloured pieces of paper and lots of cute little magnets, to map out my storyline. And file little background pieces for all of my characters. But, as every year, I don't know everything already, so those little snippets will be filled out when I suddenly discover they have five siblings under the age of ten, went on holiday to North Korea or have tapdancing for a hobby. Characters never cease to surprise. So I'll still call myself a 'plantser'; someone who has somewhat plotted out their novel, but is mostly 'pantsing', that is; seeing what will come up.

The last couple of years (apart from some diversions into fantasy or romance) I have been writing in the 'realism' genre, which were mostly variations on my very successful 2015 NaNo story. This year, I'm sticking with the style I like, and it is going to be a realistic novel, but I chose 'literary' as my genre nonetheless. I am hoping to get a bit more Sally Rooney/Ali Smithesque vibe going. I have been debating whether I want to write first person narrator or omniscient narrator, and the answer might even be; both, depending on the section. I am a big fan of consistency though, so again; we shall see how that goes. And I am writing in Dutch, yet again.

And as always, I will keep you up to date with my writing progress. There are some nifty new badges on the website, so I may even try to update my wordcount every day. Also, as November 1st is a Sunday, I hope to put in at least 5,000 words tomorrow, to give me some headway in the busier workdays ahead. And then we'll see how much all that plotting and preparing is going to pay off...

The Testaments

Finally, The Testaments, that other Man Booker winner from that strange year where there were two. I'd read Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo in April already, but had to wait for this Atwood novel to come out in paperback. Yes, yes, I'm one of those people, who wants all their novels to be the same binding and size so they line up prettily in their bookcases. The fact that Atwood moved her novels from the publisher with the little apple on the side to Vintage has been bugging me for a couple of books now; everything lines up nicely until we get to The heart goes last. Which is her most disappointing novel, for more than one reason.

Anyway, The Testaments, the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale nobody actually saw coming. I'd heard so much about this novel already, from reviews and interviews and analyses of why there were two Man Booker winners, that it felt like I already knew what it was going to be about. Added to that, The Handmaid's Tale has become a tv series (or rather; internet series, in my case) which must have influenced the novel in some way. Maybe not for Atwood while she was writing it, but at least for me while I was reading it. So I knew I would be travelling back to Gilead, the dystopian future-USA where after a coup by religious extremists society has been turned upside down.

I also already knew that the novel consisted of the writings of three females from after the events of The Handmaid's Tale, and that one of these women was the dreadful Aunt Lydia. Now in the tv series Aunt Lydia is more horrendous than she is in the novel, at least in my memory, for in the novel there are more named Aunts. So I thought she would be an interesting character to find out more about; why her beliefs had led her to become who she was and act the way she does. Sadly, none of that. We find out (spoiler alert here) that Aunt Lydia doesn't even belief in all the Gilead social rules. She isn't a founding member, or even a convert. She just wanted to save her own skin.

That made me really sad. This way, the character is on the same side as the reader, which deprives us of understanding how that society came to be. Why not delve into the minds of some one who really believes these actions, these social constraints, the foundation of this society?  Of course, women aren't considered very capable in these circles, but the tv series solved this by having one of the Wives as one of the founding members, who really stood for her beliefs, and was slightly horrified but also accepting when she discovered what that did to her own position in society. I can see how Atwood wanted to keep her story as her own and not copy the tv premise, but having Aunt Lydia as a sort of double agent, working her way to bring about the downfall of Gilead, is just a cheap act to save yourself from writing someone truly evil. (Incidentally, I read in an interview with some crime writers that they never write a fully evil person, as readers don't want to see someone who is evil without a justifiable cause. So there always has to be a bad childhood experience or other external factor that causes someone to become evil. Same goes for Aunt Lydia; she suffered at the outset of Gilead and that turned her against her fellow women to save her own skin. As I said, a missed chance). This way, the whole Gilean society remains as unplausible as it was in 1985.

The other two 'writers' are two younger women, one living in Gilead and one in Canada. Their stories are very exposition-heavy, combined with teenage voices and thoughts. The one in Gilead was somewhat interesting, because she actually bought into the whole social system (not having a lot of other options since she was born there), until she found out what it would mean for her life as a Wife. With the added elements of peer pressure, group dynamics in adolescent girls, and her genuine surprise at the hypocricy of Gilean high society made her story quite interesting. The Canadian girl was a typical teenager, far less believable, mostly because she was as flat as a board. She had no personality and functioned mainly as an outside-in view of Gilead, until events took over and she actually became a playing piece for the plot to move forward.

Ah, the plot. More than any other Atwood novel, this one is very plot driven. Actions are set into motion, most of them deliberately by Aunt Lydia, and they propel towards an inevitable end. This plot focus feels at odds with the form of the novel, the written personal accounts. Personal accounts, I might add, which in two of the three characters describe actions that happened some time ago.  Because the writings date from after the action, we already know they are going to survive the main part of the story. Again, not a smart choice in a novel that is so focussed on what is happening and tries to build some kind of suspense in the outcome. I didn't feel that suspense once; we already knew a happy ending was on its way.

I finished the novel over a week ago, but put off writing this review hoping that I'd find some second thought, some extra layer or depth of meaning to add something to the experience of reading it. Sadly, there isn't really one. Sure, this is a feminist novel with some pretty strong female characters, and the message is crystal clear, but that's about it. The characters are flat and uninteresting, the plot is unrealistic and uninspired and there are no deeper questions or insights into the how, or why a society like Gilead ever came into being. Readers will feel relief at that it eventually ended, but if that is the main reason for awarding Margaret Atwood a Man Booker prize, I can think of some other novels that should have gotten one too, starting with Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows. 

So maybe we should think of this as the Man Booker making up for the fact they didn't give her one for The Handmaid's Tale, a novel that shows far more depth of character, psychology and society. Since that is still one of the best novels from the last 50 years (one that didn't need a sequel at all, mind you), I'll grant Atwood that. But let's forget about this unnecessary, blown-out-of-proportions sequel as fast as we can.