MaddAddam, by Margaret Atwood

This is the third part of a trilogy that began with Oryx & Crake,  and continued with The Year of the Flood. I was pleased to find that the book began with a brief recap of the first two books, as it's been quite some time since I read them. In this one, we find the surviving humans along with some modified-humans (The Crakers), and many another interesting life-form in the post-chaos world.

A lot of the book is made up of flashbacks into Zeb's life, back to the time when he and Adam were half-brothers living with their father, "The Rev." This is pre-Flood, at the height of Corporate power in Atwood's future Earth.

Atwood's writing is, as always, unintrusive, economical, precise, and entertaining.

What could be a drab indictment of the present environmental atrocities committed all about us is kept alive as a very readable story by the interesting and sympathetic characters she has created in this trilogy.

Be advised: one is not left with a warm, fuzzy view of the future.

NY Times Sunday Book Review

Margaret Atwood's Web Site

Future Dramatization of the Trilogy

The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood

This novel is set simultaneously with Oryx & Crake, in the future. Global warming is no longer a subject of speculation, it is the condition of the world. Bioengineering has become a big industry, and scientists are manufacturing new species such as the pigoon, and the rakunk. Corporations are running everythng, and then -- comes the waterless flood.

Recent Reading

I've done dismally at keeping up with this. At least I can make a list of books, I think, which is probably incomplete, but this is some of what I've been reading lately:

• Last Night in Twisted River, by John Irving
• Music Through the Floor, by Eric Puchner
• We Were Just Kids, by Patti Smith
• Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
• Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood
• 11/22/63, by Stephen King
• Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
• The Sixties, Unplugged, by Gerard DeGroot
•  Trader of Secrets, by Steve Martini