This one started out great but went downhill about 2/3rds of the way through. I love Margaret Atwood, and I don’t mind when she gets a little weird, but this one had just a little too much weirdness for me. “I don’t think they’ll ever replace the living and breathing,” says Gary. “They said that about e-books,” says Kevin. “You can’t stop progress.” Sometime in the (probably near) future, the economy has gone way downhill. After losing their jobs, Charmaine and Stan have been reduced to living a […]
From A(dam) to Z(eb) the trilogy concludes
I was anxious to read this book, could the last in the trilogy measure up to the first two? I’m glad to say it did! At first I was annoyed by the constant presence of the Crakers but they grow on you over time, as does the perspective of hearing a story as told to them, simplistic and filled with misinformation and half truths. The device allows for humor though (“please stop singing” and the invocation of f***) which this deep into a dystopian future […]
Addams and Eves against mankind?
The second book in Atwood’s Madd Addam trilogy traces members of a group called God’s Gardeners both before and after “The Great Waterless Flood,” i.e., the pandemic that destroyed mankind. The chapters bounce around to the different characters, years before the pandemic, and show their previous lives leading up to the destruction. The first novel followed Jimmy in his life in the compound, but these characters are the other half, the less privileged from the pleeblands. But as time goes on, connections between these two […]
Fun times with Elvis sex robots (no, really).
Hi, Margaret Atwood fangirl over here. I was SO excited that she was coming out with a new book, because I find her cultural criticism to be spot-on. I didn’t read ahead about The Heart Goes Last, but I was *sure* that her book would have some sort of cultural criticism, dystopian element, and wry humor. Of course, I was not disappointed. In The Heart Goes Last, the world is an economic wasteland. Stan and Charmaine are living in their car while desperately trying to […]