ŷ������

Some questions are best left unanswered, and some endings are better off unwritten because sometimes the question itself is what makes the piece so extraordinary. Revealing what happens next could only ever be disappointing.

This felt like a massive overwrite. Atwood is only joining the dots here, piecing together the threads of storytelling and character arcs left open from the previous two instalments (that were only ever vaguely related to each other.) It’s like a forced conclusion as it’s all shoved into a box with a nice little bow wrapped around it. It’s also terribly repetitive, going over the events from Oryx and Crake again. Much of this novel is stuck in the past and it adds very little to the trilogy at large. It has no momentum and no presence.

I honestly don’t understand why she even bothered to write it. There’s nothing new here. A huge part of the book is told from the perspective of Zeb (a minor character from book two) and we learn his experience about events we’ve already read about. I just don’t get it, as the book plods on at a mind numbingly boring pace nothing really happens. The ending itself (or at least the event that I saw as bringing Jimmy’s story to closure) was absolutely pointless.

And, in a way, this makes me massively worried about what’s to come next. Later this year, she is releasing a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. Part of the that book's brilliance was the openness of its ending. Atwood said all that she needed to; the particulars of the plot weren’t overly important, so I’m a little worried she may fall into a similar trap.

I hope I never rate an Atwood novel this low again.

MaddAddam Trilogy
1. Oryx and Crake - 5 stars
2. The Year of the Flood - 5 stars
3. MaddAddam - 2 stars



_________________________________

You can connect with me on social media via .
__________________________________