MaddAddam: A Novel
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, September 2013:Margaret Atwood’s genius is fed by her appetite for synthesis: she sees every consequential cultural and tech trend (the realized and the possible) and spins them out into a near-future that’s both freakishly strange and horrifyingly plausible. MaddAddam concludes the trilogy she started withOryx and CrakeandThe Year of the Flood, simultaneously set stories of the survivors (and the late creator) of a deliberately unleashed plague that’s left a few ragged stragglers—the fever-dreaming Snowman, remnants of a peaceful God’s Gardeners cult and eco-warrior MaddAddamites, psychotic escapees from the Painball arena, and humanity’s bioengineered “replacements,” the bizarrely placid Crakers—all bushwhacking through a trashed world of animal mash-ups (including some wicked-smart Pigoons). Depending on your outlook, she’s a scathing satirist, an alarmist, or an oracle. But the world she imagines feels near enough that you won’t soon forget it. --Mari Malcolm