Title: MaddAddam
Author: Margaret
Atwood
Publisher:
Doubleday
Publish
date: 2013
ISBN: 978 0
385 52878 8
‘He
could sense words rising from him, burning away in the sun. Soon he’d be
wordless, and the would he still be able to think? No and yes, yes and no. He’d
be up against it, up against everything that filled the space he was moving
through, with no glass pane of language coming between him and not-him. Not-him
was seeping into him through his defences, through his edges, eating away at
form, sending its rootlets into his head like reverse hairs. He needed to keep
moving, preserve his outlines, define himself by his own shockwaves, the wake
he left in the air.’
The final book in the Oryx and Crake
trilogy, there is a quality to this book in particular which defies summary. Not
that there isn’t a definite progression of narrative and it’s easily described:
Zeb’s life prior to the happenings in the other two books are detailed, various
backstories are filled in, there is a culmination of action in an altercation
with some Painballers, and one of the Crackers brings the narrative to a close
with some hint of hope for the future for the human / humanish race. However an
aura of disintegration is carefully produced by the episodic and retold nature
of the majority of the narration. The only solid point is Toby, who actually
experiences time in the present – almost unwillingly. The rest are retellings,
memories, shadows and imaginings.
So once again, we find here a novel that is
essentially about the act of storytelling, and the meaning that act has for our
existence. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not wading in metatextual vagaries and indulging
in navel-gazing. There’s a damn good storyline going on there, a frightening
political and sociological commentary, and shitloads of wickedly dark humour on
all fronts. It’s everything you’d expect. But the novel itself is an enquiry
into the justification of human existence, through the medium of the nature of
storytelling.
Stories are endlessly demanded by the
Crakers, who, stripped of all human passions that might make for disquiet, seek
tales of creation and remembrance, to the distraction of the humans. The narrative
baton is passed from reluctant human to the next. They interject with ‘I have a
headache.’ ‘That is enough for today.’ And ‘Please don’t sing.’ The burden of
being the storyteller is one of the chief recurring motifs. When the Craker boy
Blackbeard (whose name is initially comic until we realise he is the first to
learn to write, and that it is almost Blackboard) takes over the storytelling
role, even he, a singer himself, asks the audience: ‘please don’t sing’. The ‘what
happened’ and the ‘how can I retell this’ is on a constant back-and-forth.
It is a book that puts bizarre images in
your mind, that disturbs, and haunts. But for a book on mass extinction and the
potential end of the human race, it leaves you with a surprising calmness. It’s
painted with the light touch of a consummate master. Go read, and then re-read.
Five moose-hoofs up.
