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MaddAddam (MaddAddam Trilogy, Book 3)
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testamants—this final volume of the internationally celebrated MaddAddam trilogy "has brought the previous two books together in a fitting and joyous conclusion that’s an epic not only…
- Release Date
- 2013
- Length
- 417 pages
- Publisher
- Vintage
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Our Review
About the book
The final book of Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy brings together survivors from the earlier novels, including Toby and the God’s Gardeners, as they live alongside the gentle, genetically engineered Crakers and face threats from violent prisoners and dangerous engineered animals.
Our review
Atwood closes her trilogy with a surprisingly tender story about storytelling, community and what comes after the end.
MaddAddam is the trilogy’s most hopeful book. Toby is a superb anchor, wry and wary, and her attempts to tell stories to the curious Crakers are among the funniest and most moving things Atwood has written. Zeb’s backstory fills in the history of the God’s Gardeners and the corporations that ruined the world, and the slow emergence of a mixed community suggests the future might hold something besides ruin. The ideas about myth-making stay with you.
The book is loose and baggy compared with its predecessors. Zeb’s long flashback narrative takes over much of the middle and slows the present-day story, and the eventual confrontation with the main threat is brief and low-key. New readers will be lost without the first two books. As a conclusion it is more reflective than climactic, which some readers will find fitting and others will find a letdown.
What we loved
- Toby’s wry, warm narration
- Funny, moving scenes of storytelling with the Crakers
- A cautiously hopeful ending to a bleak saga
Keep in mind
- Sprawling flashbacks slow the main story
- An understated climax
Read it if you like
Readers finishing Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, or fans of Parable of the Talents and Station Eleven.
The verdict
A thoughtful, uneven finale that finds hope after the apocalypse. Read the trilogy in order.
