Really great conclusion to an amazing trilogy. Atwood is a goddess of literature.
Ten years after the release of the first book in the Maddaddam trilogy (Oryx and Crake) and four years after the release of the second book in the trilogy (Year of the Flood), Margaret Atwood releases the final book in her apocalyptic/post-apocalypse series - Maddaddam. When Atwood first released Oryx and Crake, the post-apocalypse wasn't as fun and romanticized as it is right now - hard to imagine I know but ....: the Walking Dead was not yet on TV, Red Dawn had not yet been remade, and main stream romance publishing houses weren't regularly releasing post-apocalypse romance themed books. I think it is fair to say that in 2003, the apocalypse was not yet the rage. It is interesting that when the series ends, Maddaddam finds itself nestled on bookshelves next to other mainstream and best sellers that deal with the what-happens-when-society-collapses. Atwood is a visionary. But Maddaddam and the trilogy is not just about the collapse of society, it is about so much more.
Each book in the trilogy is told form a different point of view and at a different point in time, yet it is the same story and the same characters. The entire story is told in the present, but it is done with memory and flashbacks of the characters. Each book is about the time before the collapse of the world's society and each book is also about the time after the societal collapse.
There are no zombies, no aliens, no floods and the moon didn't fall out of the sky. Instead Atwood's book (and series) is really a critique of what she sees as a major movement in our culture and our world - corporate control and dominance. Can you imagine a world where the corporations call the shots? Where the governments are so weakened that the corporations are the ones truly running things? What if the motivation to earn profit by those at the top of the corporation is what ruled the world? And these corporations controlled all scientific endeavors and the production of all food? Hmmmmmm ..... These are the topics explored by the Maddaddam trilogy and Atwood does this with really well developed characters, an amazingly intricately built (but believable) future world. Atwood began writing about this topic in the early 2000s. She is such a visionary (yes I have written that word twice now in this review -- but remember her book The Handmaid's Tale?, yeah she is brilliant).
But it is also about relationships with our fathers and mothers. It is about sexuality, desire and how gender roles are constructed. The series takes on concepts of the building of myth and religion. And it is also funny.
"Rebecca's having a cup of what they've all agreed to call coffee."
But you know what it is not? The post-apocalypse is not fun and it is not romantic. In Atwood's imagined world, there is no coffee, there is no abundant supplies free for the taking and even with the majority of the population gone it is hard to find food. Empty buildings are dangerous as untended electrical wires and water pipes often mal-function causing fires and flooding. City centers can be filled with tainted water and structurally unsound buildings due to lack of human maintenance. Without family members around to support us and no hope for the future, motivation is hard to maintain:
"Daytime becomes irrelevant. You can get careless, you can overlook details, you can lose track. These days she'll find herself upright, in the middle of the room, one sandal in her hand, wondering how she got there; or outside under a tree, watching the leaves riffle, then prodding herself: Move. Move now. Get moving. You need to .... But what exactly is it that she needs to do?"
I would categorize this series as both literary fiction and science fiction. Readers who enjoy Margaret Atwood books or readers who read science fiction/post-apocalypse books to think about broader concepts beyond just the story would enjoy this trilogy. Fans of the first two books may be slightly disappointed by the beginning of Maddaddam, but stick with it. The story does start slow and has a different feel but it is very rewarding and addicting.
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Popular Highlights in this book
There’s the story, then there’s the real story, then there’s the story of how the story came to be told. Then there’s what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.Highlighted by 852 Kindle readers- Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if it had a voice?Highlighted by 698 Kindle readers
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2013
- Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2013
- Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2025
Top reviews from other countries
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- A. VolkReviewed in Canada on August 30, 2013
Well crafted post-apocalyptic story finale
- Arunima & Subham'sReviewed in India on October 31, 2022
Pointless
Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy (2003-2013) presents a catastrophic aftermath of a viral pandemic where one such damaged ecosystem becomes a thinking-space trying to recognize and re-configure the potential of our species and the inescapable network of entanglements, in relation to our nonhuman Others and planetary inhabitations.Arunima & Subham'sPointless
Reviewed in India on October 31, 2022
However, MaddAddam, the third installation, is a pointless extension that fails miserably to deal with the subtleties of a post-apocalyptic condition. It is just another drag that offers the perspective of other characters but hesitates to probe into their existential predicament in relation to the planetary condition. Although somewhat experimental, as it frequently attempts to escape the conventional diegesis, MaddAddam has nothing to offer other than a few instances of hesitant reflection on the subject of planetary co-existence and the retention of the humane, as a praxis, by the ‘more-than-human’.
P.S: Teaching the Crakers to write so that they may live to tell the tale of their human predecessors, glorifying them and possibly eventually deifying them as well – a kind of pre-conditioning before death so that the glories may survive and in them being immortalised; isn’t that egocentric?
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- LisaReviewed in Australia on December 30, 2014
Masterfully crafted and profoundly satisfying
