MaddAddam (Atwood)

Book Reviews
What a joy it is to see Margaret Atwood taking such delicious pleasure in the end of the world.... In MaddAddam, the third volume of Atwood's apocalyptic MaddAddam trilogy, she has sent the survivors of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood to a compound where they await a final showdown. But what gives MaddAddam such tension and light are the final revelations of how this new world came to be, and how the characters made their way to this battle for the future of humanity. Atwood has brought the previous two books together in a fitting and joyous conclusion that's an epic not only of an imagined future but of our own past, an exposition of how oral storytelling traditions led to written ones and ultimately to our sense of origin…Atwood's prose miraculously balances humor, outrage and beauty.
Andrew Sean Greer - New York Times Book Review


[S]ardonically funny.... [Atwood] certainly has the tone exactly right, both for the linguistic hypocrisy that can disguise any kind of catastrophe, and for the contemptuous dismissal of those who point to disaster.... MaddAddam is at once a pre- and a post-apocalypse story.
Wall Street Journal


This unsentimental narrative exposes the heart of human creativity as well as our self-destructive darkness.... MaddAddam is fueled with edgy humor, sardonic twists, hilarious coincidences.
Boston Globe


MaddAddam is sharp, witty and strong enough to stand alone.... Peppered with witty neologisms, Atwood’s character-driven novel is terrific precisely because of close attention to detail, to voice, to what’s in the hearts of these people: love, loss, the need to keep on keeping on, no matter what.... [T]his novel sings.
Miami Herald


[T]here is something funny, even endearing, about such a dark and desperate view of a future—a ravaged world emerging from alarmingly familiar trends—that is so jam-packed with the gifts of imagination, invention, intelligence and joy. There may be some hope for us yet.
Minneapolis Star Tribune


Margaret Atwood continues to flourish as she approaches her fifth decade of publication.... A thrilling and enchanting—funny, sad, clever, audacious—tale of grumpy, deflated, and perilous post-apocalyptic times, year 0.6.
Vancouver Sun


[T]he imaginative universe Atwood has created in these books is huge.... It's a dystopia, but it's still fun.... Atwood doesn't just ask what if, she raises an eyebrow and says, See where we're going? Yet she's not a pessimist: She's invented a future large enough to include, after the end of the world, people falling in love.
Los Angeles Times


The final entry in Atwood’s brilliant MaddAddam trilogy roils with spectacular and furious satire.... Her vision is as affirming as it is cautionary, and the conclusion of this remarkable trilogy leaves us not with a sense of despair at mankind’s failings but with a sense of awe at humanity’s barely explored potential to evolve.
Independent (UK)


(Starred review.) The final entry in Atwood’s brilliant MaddAddam trilogy roils with spectacular and furious satire. The novel begins where Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood end, just after most of the human species has been eradicated by a man-made plague. The early books explore a world of terrifying corporate tyranny, horrifying brutality, and the relentless rape of women and the planet....  [Atwood's] vision is as affirming as it is cautionary, and the conclusion of this remarkable trilogy leaves us not with a sense of despair at mankind’s failings but with a sense of awe at humanity’s barely explored potential to evolve.
Publishers Weekly


[T]he story of the MaddAddamites, survivors of a global pandemic that wiped out most of humanity. Readers...will be quickly drawn in and eager to find out what happens to the MaddAddamites and to the Crakers, a gentle, quasihuman species created by Crake.... [T]his finale is a gripping read for any reader. —Shaunna E. Hunter, Hampden-Sydney Coll. Lib., VA
Library Journal


Ten years after Oryx & Crake rocked readers the world over, Atwood brings her cunning, impish, and bracing speculative trilogy—following The Year of the Flood—to a gritty, stirring, and resonant conclusion.... Atwood is ascendant, from her resilient characters to the feverishly suspenseful plot involving battles, spying, cyberhacking, murder, and sexual tension.... The coruscating finale in an ingenious, cautionary trilogy of hubris, fortitude, wisdom, love, and life’s grand obstinacy.
Booklist


Atwood closes her post-apocalyptic trilogy with...suggestions about how new-world mythologies are made.... Atwood herself has taken care to layer this story with plenty of detail...[and] closes out the story with just a touch of optimism. By no means her finest work, but Atwood remains an expert thinker about human foibles and how they might play out on a grand scale.
Kirkus Reviews