Margaret Atwood | Book Chatter

MaddAddam
By Margaret Atwood
Vintage, August 2024, 416pp.

The Short of It:

A satisfying conclusion to this trilogy.

The Rest of It:

I began this journey with Atwood after participating in a group read for Oryx and Crake. That book was wild and disturbing and book one in this MaddAddam trilogy. After that book, I was so bothered but another reader encouraged me to keep going. That it would all come together. So, I did.

I read book two, The Year of the Flood and it really piqued my interest, so I kept going.

Here I am. Reviewing a book without giving too much away but I am very glad I stuck with it.

This entire collection smacks of the book of Genesis. Adam and Eve, creation and what happens when it all goes to hell.

After a pandemic, society falls apart. The world is filled with hybrid animals and bio-engineered “humans” called Crakers. These people are kind, good-natured and curious. They strive to live simple lives.

Nothing can be all good though. Painballers, really criminals who roam the land taking what doesn’t belong to them, including women who they torture, rape repeatedly and then leave for dead.

Another group, The Gardeners. Vegan hippies, really. Trying to live off the ravaged land are comprised of the lost but also ex-corporate types who walked away from that lifestyle.

What ensues is wild. Groups of people trying to survive. Their ways foreign and bizarre. Mating rituals that seem so far out there but also kind of sensible given their need to regenerate the population.

There are heroes and martyrs and battles to survive. Right and a whole lot of wrong. Riveting stuff.

Highly recommend the ENTIRE trilogy. You can’t peck around with these books. They must be read in order.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

The Year of the Flood
By Margaret Atwood
Vintage, 2010, 448pp.

The Short of It:

This is the second book in a trilogy. Much easier to consume than book one due to its difficult content.

The Rest of It:

Atwood is such a force. She’s created this world where everything has gone to hell and man, it’s so fitting for our times.

In this installment, we learn more about the different communities that resulted after the pandemic that took the world by storm. There are Gardeners, extreme Vegans who grow their food on rooftops and the worst of the worst, the folks that have been imprisoned and escaped only to cause havoc in a land without protection.

In this installment, we learn more about the Crakers, who were introduced in Oryx and Crake. These people are a mild people who live their lives happily, often singing, and procreating. Yep. They are bio-engineered and when the women are ripe, they turn blue which signals the Crakers to gather with their swinging blue appendages (take a guess here) and then a foursome is chosen to continue the human race. This is a bizarre practice and wild to read about.

While the Crakers are running around singing and carrying on, the Gardeners find themselves a target because of their resiliency and food supply that others so desperately want. Plus, it’s a lawless society. Women are taken and abused repeatedly and often left for dead. The Gardeners are forced to move in order to save their own.

In this installment, we begin to see the origins of Oryx and Crake. How Oryx created all the animals, including the violent Pigoons, but are they really violent, flesh eating creatures or are they too, just trying to survive? Crake’s power is explored but the idolatry that folks had for him begins to crack as people come together and share their own stories of the land before.

The Year of the Flood really solidified my love for Atwood. As soon as I finished, I immediately picked up book three, MaddAddam. I should have that review up soon.

Highly recommend if you can get through book one, Oryx and Crake. You must read these books in order or you will be lost.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

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