A Tired Apocalypse

Margaret Atwood's newest novel, “MaddAddam,” brings to a close the apocalyptic science fiction trilogy that began with “Oryx and Crake” and “The Year of the Flood.” The first two novels tell the story of the “waterless flood,” a plague designed by the genius Crake to eliminate the human race, ending its rampant destruction of the natural world. In its place, Crake creates a new species, genetically engineered to eliminate every feature he believes contributed to the current sad state of humanity. But the plague wasn’t perfectly effective—a few survivors remain. Jimmy, Crake’s boyhood friend, becomes a prophet figure for the “Crakers,” as he calls the new human species, telling them stories of their creator. Ren, Amanda, Toby, Zeb, and other members of the God's Gardeners, an eco-spiritualist cult that emerged in the slums of the pre-flood world, also survive, joining with a few of Crake’s former collaborators to attempt to build a life after the flood. Other survivors, including some hardened criminals, add to the dangers of the now unfamiliar world.

“MaddAddam” picks up where “Oryx and Crake” and “The Year of the Flood” left readers dangling: Toby and Ren have just discovered Jimmy, injured and hallucinating, and rescued Amanda from the men who kidnapped and repeatedly raped her. Toby ruminates on her memory of that night, cursing herself for allowing the criminals to escape. This provides the framework for the novel’s present-timeline plot—we get a climactic fight scene, the confrontation one expects in the anarchy of a post apocalyptic world. But, as with the preceding novels, most of the story occurs in the past. This time it's the story of Zeb, the smart-mouthed, ever-capable “bad boy” who we remember from “The Year of the Flood,” and with whom Toby, our narrator, is in love. In typical fashion for this trilogy, it turns out we remember him, albeit under different names, from a few other places as well, and the past lives of Atwood's characters become, if possible, even more entangled.

While the previous books each ended after resolving the majority of their plot questions, the closing scenes brought chance encounters that left the characters' futures open to wild speculation. Atwood is an author of such talent that readers might have hungered for more even without these cliffhanger endings. “MaddAddam” delivers, although not as spectacularly as one could have hoped. Fans of “Oryx and Crake” and “The Year of the Flood” will revel in the return to their world, but there may be little to interest anyone else.

Atwood's extraordinary skill as a writer is still evident, but there is something missing from her creative prose. Her use of language is both clever and beautiful, and her characters and their interactions are decisively believable. There are also plenty of displays of the unique, dark humor that helped make the preceding novels so engaging. For instance, the Crakers, upon hearing Jimmy exclaim “Oh, fuck!” come to believe that “Fuck” is an invisible helper, a friend of their creator-figure Crake. Yet “MaddAddam” doesn't afford quite the same opportunity for the spectacular, detailed world building of the previous two books. “Oryx and Crake” explored a world of all-powerful corporations and genetic engineering run rampant, endowing humanity with the power to create both wonders and nightmares. “The Year of the Flood” explored the impoverished underside of this world—street fights, high-tech strip clubs, criminals punished through the death-match sport of “Painball,” as well as the theology and customs of the God's Gardeners. In “MaddAddam,” this rich world has already been rendered in stunning detail; the most we get is some shading in around the edges.

The plot is similarly lacking in freshness. “MaddAddam” appears to exist not by dint of its own driving force, but rather to tie up some loose ends from its predecessors. Zeb is an intriguing character in his own right, and Atwood develops a back-story for him that is simultaneously fascinating and heart-wrenching. Unfortunately, this story never feels quite complete. Perhaps it lacks the pleasing symmetry of a tale told for its own sake, as it functions simply as a medium to deliver answers about the founding of the God's Gardeners as well as MaddAddam, the novel’s eponymous bio-terrorist organization. As a protagonist, Zeb is too vulgar and too ready to kill,  traits which make him beguiling at first, but ultimately create discomfort on the part of the reader that Atwood fails to turn to any particular purpose.

Several other factors contribute to the less than inspiring result. Toby fails to bring much to the table as narrator. Her internal conflicts emerge primarily from jealousy—an emotion that tends to be more irksome than sympathy-inducing.  She, like many of the characters, appears used up by her experiences fighting to survive after most of humanity is wiped out. Throughout “MaddAddam,” energy is in short supply. The plague has come and life as we know it has vanished, but we are already done with the interesting part, for “Oryx and Crake” and “The Year of the Flood” covered all bases explaining why the catastrophe occurred. The original shock and awe, with every aspect of life a struggle, is gone, and the everyday work of building a new life—gardening, cooking, gleaning supplies, fortifying the fence—is fairly boring. Several hundred pages where nothing of much interest, apart from reminiscence, occurs are capped off with some hurried action in the novel's latter third, bringing the book to an abrupt ending.

Despite these complaints, there is plenty to praise in MaddAddam—the detail, the characters, the sardonic wit, the poignant questions about life after civilization, the parallels to traditional origin stories. In fact, it is only when compared to these strengths, which set a high standard for the book, that the flaws stand out. For Atwood’s established readers, “MaddAddam” provides the excitement of returning to the world she so vividly created in “Oryx and Crake” and “The Year of the Flood,” as well as a sense of closure previously absent. But the new novel pales in comparison to its predecessors, leaving us to wonder if perhaps the trilogy would have best been left a duology. Not every blank space needs filling in.