Elsewhere, by Richard Russo

This is a memoir, and Russo mentions early on that it will be mostly about his mother, and that is quite true. Nevertheless, being an Upstate New York expatriate myself, I found reading about Gloversville and Russo's relationship with the area and its people irresistible.

In fourth grade or thereabouts, we learned some basic area history, and we were taught about the "glove cities" of Fonda, Johnstown, and Gloversville. I don't believe that we were taught quite everything that Russo relates in his book: the horrible working conditions, the disregard for the employees' safety, the environmental destruction, and the overseas flight that the corporations took to avoid the inconvenience of providing a living wage and complying with legal requirements to destroy neither their employees' health nor the quality of the Mohawk River's water.

Russo's account of his life with his mother comprises most of this book. She was a profoundly disturbed individual, but at the same time committed to her son, and determined that he should be a success. His love for her is quite obvious in these pages.

Here's a much better review than I will write.

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