MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
Adult fiction rambles by M
(haha, there’s a short video of Atwood somewhere, cracking a
smile about MaddAddam’s dark humour, “parental guidance and all that”!)
Thanks to Hatchards Bloomsbury Book Club, my copy of MaddAddam
turned up early enough for me to be an advanced reader before any of the
mainstream reviews surfaced. So I read it whole, then made some notes, then
read some mixed reviews, and then met Margaret Atwood. A couple of other things
happened too and now, these are my thoughts-at-this-juncture on MaddAddam. It's a bit uncharacteristically gushy. For a succint overview of the plot, look somewhere else.
Punning satire and parody, MaddAddam is earnestly comical cult
fiction. Forget literary salons, guys, the next cosplay is MaddAddam CampGeek
at my place via PulpFiction-cum-RockyHorrorPictureShow-cum-BoneyM (and if we
can fix the world too, great). And then we can watch Aidan Quinn (sorry Offred)
and maybe eat cake (morally disordered, of course). If ever there was an
impetus for me doing fan-fiction, MaddAddam is it (wonder what the Toad’s
copyright regime is...).
So yes, if you haven’t read any of it, the trilogy’s a
Margaret Atwood blast: Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and then
MaddAddam. And then read The Blind Assassin: the parallels between her latest
offering and her Booker winner are mad! There’s plenty of overlapping pulp fiction in that
winner.
Trilogy- and plot-wise, all three overlap but fill gaps and provide alternative
perspectives on the same events: the
story behind the MaddAddam ARG and organisation, the apocalyptic time and the
fallout. But in MaddAddam, Atwood brings storytelling to the forefront as the
novel’s form is structured around Toby’s night-time storytelling. This could be
be seen as the development of the chapters in a new Crakers’ gospel, much as
the God’s Gardener’s from The Year of the Flood had their psalms/songs. Toby
even creates the possibility for the addition of new testaments through
Blackbeard. Indeed, each of the three novels are a new testament on the same
central story.
Comic. Above anything else, for me, MaddAddam is funny; at
times it is farcical. Known for her caustically detailed observations about our
lived and culturally-enhanced humanities, Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam is
nothing if not a moment of let’s-laugh-and-cry at ourselves. Much of the humour
feels like it has developed straight from a creative stream-of-consciousness brainstorming session that delights in wordplay. God’s Gardeners, it’s
cutting bloody dark fun.
Of wordplay there is plenty and the novel's central
themes, for me, are about words and meaning particularly in the context of
storytelling, both written and spoken, and with multiple narrators over periods
of time. In some ways, this has threaded all through the whole trilogy and were
present in The Blind Assassin.
For other readers, eco-political themes will ring loudest.
And of course, as with many of her novels, Atwood also grapples with sexual and
romantic relationships. Sexual relationships and particularly monogamous versus
polygamous relationships, romance versus biological reproduction and consensual
acts versus abuse abound in the MaddAddamite trilogy. MaddAddam shows – clearly
– how blurred lines really are. An example of this is an “energetic” pun on
foreplay which in some ways is a reprehensible bang.
At the same time, despite her matter of fact and non-sentimental
style, MaddAdam, like The Handmaid’s Tale, is also a smouldering love story.
For the critics who suggest that MaddAddam sacrifices characterisation, in my
mind, they’ve missed the point/s. Nowhere are Zeb and Toby more real than in
this novel. Shucks, I even shed a tear (note the singularity). And look at the
Crakers whom we first meet and the Crakers that we leave.
Singing: this seems to work as some sort of motif or
extended metaphor. Zeb sings little ditties when he’s frightened or stressed.
Gospel singers sing. The Crakers sing. Adam, Toby, Crake and eventually,
Blackbeard, don’t like singing. But Toby also learns that the Crakers’ singing
is something that might save them. I even asked Margaret Atwood about it.
In the latter part of the novel,
there are strains of Animal Farm.
At first, I couldn’t get into MaddAddam. I wasn’t fond of
the ‘storytelling’ form that it was taking, framed by a very thin plot.
However, as it develops into a story about Zeb, it becomes much more
interesting although there is no real crescendo – though there are some very
high and significant ends of chapters towards the end.
I read both of the previous novels a few years ago, and
although there is a very extensive ‘the story so far’ at the beginning, and
although Atwood provides lots of catch-up details throughout MaddAddam, I
couldn’t help wishing that I’d read the three novels in order quite quickly
one after the other.
At the end, the MaddAddamite left me sorry to say goodbye to some
of my favourite Gardeners. It also left me craving to go and read, and re-read
more of Atwood’s fiction. So, I did.
Publication details: Bloomsbury, 2013, London, hardback
This copy: mine and signed!