Atwood is a big fan of George Orwell and 1984 in particular, and both in this book, and in The Testaments and The Handmaid’s Tell she uses the same device of a story recorder, capturing the events, and trying to leave some record for a future audience. These are fun books to read, and overall it is an enjoyable and engaging trilogy to read.Īt the same time it is also grappling deeply with important issues that we need to address and come up with a better solution than we have currently managed to date. Thankfully this is much less of the case with the Maddaddam book, and even the series in general. When this is done too zealously, think of the endless reworking of the Star Wars movies to remedy unresolved issues, it can detract from the joy of pure story telling. Maddaddam in some ways feels like an attempt to join up the loose ends and uncompleted stories from the first two books.

Environmental issues, yes, genetic manipulation with dubious ethical actions, yes, corporates unchecked and acting in uncontrolled ways, yes. As a whole, written from 2003, to 2009, to the concluding book, they remain prescient and impressively relevant for this current times of upheaval in 2020. This is the concluding book in the Maddaddam trilogy by Margaret Atwood, published in 2013. As clever Pigoons attack their fragile garden and malevolent Painballers scheme, the small band of survivors will need more than stories. Their reluctant prophet, Jimmy-the-Snowman, is in a coma, so they’ve chosen a new hero – Zeb, the street-smart man Toby loves. Listening hard is young Blackbeard, one of the innocent Crakers, the species designed to replace humanity. Stories left over from the old world, and stories that will determine a new one. Toby, a survivor of the man-made plague that has swept the earth, is telling stories. Available from Virago here.īy the author of The Handmaid’s Tale and Alias Grace By Simon Cocking, review of MaddAddam: part 3 of The Maddaddam Trilogy, by Margaret Atwood.

Maddaddam trilogy by margaret atwood