Margaret Atwood Reading the Testaments London 2019
The last fourth dimension bookshops saw this much activeness at midnight on a weekday, a certain boy wizard was on the shelves.
"There's not some other Potter out?" a passing man asks the growing queue outside Waterstones in London's Piccadilly, where a parade of women dressed in cherry flowing robes and white bonnets are silently gliding by.
The costume of the handmaids – the fertile women ritually raped to repopulate the dystopian theocracy of Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel The Handmaid'due south Tale – has a tinge of witchiness to it, though it has become, in a short flow of fourth dimension, iconic for something more than: for feminist protest, from Republic of ireland to Argentina; and an instantly recognisable bastion of pop culture that themed a Kylie Jenner party.
Hundreds of fans have lined up to attend the midnight launch of Atwood's much-anticipated sequel, The Testaments, which will be attended past the Canadian writer herself. The ticketless hover nearby, asking if anyone knows when she is due to make it.
Alongside the handmaids are a surprise for those yet to read the book: 2 Pearl Girls dressed in flooring-length, silver gowns, who stay steadfastly in graphic symbol all night. "She handed me an orangish," says one girl in the queue, bewildered but impressed, cradling the fruit similar a precious jewel (and non yet knowing she held a crucial plot detail).
The atmosphere inside the bookshop, merely one of many effectually the world hosting a launch only the merely attended by the author herself, would be familiar to any twentysomething who grew upward on Harry Potter – simply is mayhap unexpected for a sequel to a 34-twelvemonth erstwhile literary novel about the patriarchy. Inside, young women – and the crowd is mostly women in their 20s and 30s, who probably grew up on Potter launches – and the occasional female parent or young man are drinking acid-light-green mocktails, tucking into cupcakes and taking downwards the patriarchy through craftivism. More than than 1 person says they're dedicating their Tuesday to reading.
Kasey is there with her mother, Michaela, who gave her the book when she was 13. "I've been annoyed always since then that information technology ended on such a cliffhanger," she says. "A potential ending is so exciting."
Michaela was given the book for Christmas in 1985, "and no ane could speak to me because I was so engrossed. So much of what she has predicted has come true, specially with the Christian right in the U.s.. I call up she's a prophet."
Indi credits The Handmaid's Tale as the reason she studies English literature at Cardiff University. Greta, a Lithuanian student, wrote her master's dissertation on Atwood and Shakespeare. The pair met in the queue, and are delicately embroidering "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum", the Latin phrase carved into Offred'due south closet past a previous handmaid in her household: "Don't let the bastards grind you down."
"I actually desire to meet Atwood in person," Greta says. "Having examined her work as a literary celebrity and knowing so much virtually a person you've never seen in your life? It is going to be weird."
Due to the prescience of her novels, and a well-timed and well-reviewed Boob tube accommodation, Atwood has caused new glory at the grand age of 79 – and not just among young people: authors including Jeanette Winterson, Neil Gaiman and Elif Shafak are attention the London launch.
Winterson, who showtime read Atwood while at university, says the Canadian writer has always kept an centre on who is "moving the edges in".
"Parliament has been prorogued today," she tells the Guardian. "We've got Trump in America, that egotistic, egotistical, shitface in Downing Street. What is happening? And Atwood is in that location to instruct u.s., maxim, 'You know this, inside out.' It really matters."
Gaiman says; "The terrifying thing is how well Atwood told the states about it 30 years agone. When I read The Handmaid's Tale, I was a callow 25-yr-quondam who thought we were too sensible for information technology to happen. Thirty years down the line, I know we're not all sensible.
"Some of united states are idiots. Some of united states of america are scared and can be lead past monsters. And the monsters are scared likewise. Suddenly you become the Pences, the Trumps, the Greasy Johnsons in power … if naught else, that book is a canary in our communal cave mind."
Literature's most diminutive rockstar comes out an hour earlier midnight to whoops, not looking quite used to the level of celebrity that has finally come up her way. She delivers a curt reading, then smiles equally the store unites to count downward, and dings a bong at midnight to cheers and a mad rush for books before selfies outside the shop.
Forget Potter, this is Beatles territory. Ane bookseller says information technology is not quite that crazy – just concluding week, people camped outside for a twenty-four hour period to see Paul McCartney sign his new children's volume. But, she says, it's still not far off.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/10/shes-a-prophet-handmaids-gather-for-margaret-atwoods-midnight-launch-of-the-testaments
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