This week I finished Margaret Atwood’s trilogy, with MaddAddam. I will try to be concise, but I could write about this one for a while!
MaddAddam, like Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, tells the story of how people existed before and after the plague which wipes out most humans. At its heart are love stories – Toby and Zeb, survivors of the God’s Gardeners; Zeb and his brother Adam, and Toby and Blackbeard, Craker and student.
I really enjoyed reading this book. It filled in some of the blanks left earlier in the series – such as the reason Zeb was involved with the God’s Gardeners and his relationship with the Adams and Eves, how Crake got the original plague data, what happened to his parents and so on.
More importantly though, it took the story onward. The disparate group of surviving humans started to develop a new society, with the Crakers as part of it. People started to hope and plan again. Toby’s friendship with the curious Craker child Blackbeard showed that however Crake had engineered the humanoids, he couldn’t remove their curiosity and desire to know and understand.
From this friendship, Toby started to believe in a future for humans, and Crakers, that would have been impossible at the start of the series.
I think that is the theme of the book: we can’t foresee the outcome of our actions. The Crakers were specifically created not to have religious tendencies, for example, but Oryx and Crake were their deities, and the reason for their faith in the world around them. Zeb chose how to extricate himself from his corrupt father without realising his choice would lead him to bioterrorism and into the path of the world-ending Crake.
Another important concept through the book is that of loyalty. In a world where people have to be wary of everything, trusting someone is both extremely difficult and essential. That is juxtaposed with the Craker stance of trust by default.
The final thing I will say is that I found the ending of the book, and indeed the series, satisfying. It wasn’t neatly tied in a bow but the story lived on and that was important to me, having invested in the world Atwood created. I also liked the lack of concrete resolution on the plague itself: we know who, and how, but we can never entirely know why – which is absolutely the way of the world.
I could say so much more but it’ll ruin the reading experience if I go any further!
Tying this back to writing, I am in awe of the complexity and breadth of the world Atwood has created. This is a world she both built up, and then destroyed, and she had to get the details right in both states.
I don’t think this is a standalone book, because even if you could read it alone you wouldn’t get the context. However, for me, it was a great end to the trilogy.
Happy reading,
EJ
🙂
Becoming a writer 