MaddAddam

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.

Hag-Seed - Margaret Atwood

Title: Hag-Seed

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Hogarth Shakespeare              

Publish date: 2016

ISBN: 978 178 1090220

‘’’The last three words in the play are ‘set me free,’” says Felix. “You don’t say ‘set me free’ unless you’re not free. Prospero is a prisoner inside the play he himself has composed. There you have it: the ninth prison is the pay itself.’”

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Felix, the Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival, has taken his eye off the ball. He’s booted out of his job by usurping Tony and spends the next twelve years living as a hermit. Life and characters consciously mirror the story of ‘The Tempest’ as he foments a slow, artistic revenge.

How Atwood manages to create so much reader sympathy for a demented, self-centered, secretive, manipulative protagonist is a mystery. It happens, though. The text flows quickly as chilled white wine on a summer evening. You can take as much notice of the additional clever little mirrors and doubles of ‘The Tempest’ as you like, for there are many: the main and necessary ones are spelled out clearly. The appositeness of this play being performed in a prison is made ample use of. If you like the play, you’ll certainly gain more of an understanding of it as well by the time you’ve finished the book.

Perhaps the reader empathy is generated through the extensive character development. Felix peels back onion layer after layer of personal anguish. We see his character change and reflect on itself partly through the peculiar hallucination he nurtures, of his long-dead daughter Miranda. Spoilers would be a terrible thing but the personal logic he finally applies to this is both inspired and frankly haunting. The characters of the inmates (known only by their stage-names: Bent Pencil, Snake-eye, etc.) also develop and meld with the characters of their alter-ego play characters, pulling the play along into their unique interpretations. It’s interesting that Atwood devotes a considerable portion to after-play wrap-up, where Felix asks the actors to talk about what they think ‘happened next’ to the play’s protagonists. It’s an ingenious way of extending reader involvement and directly inviting the reader to continue the lives on the page: to free them from their paper prison and give airy nothing a local habitation and a name.

I’d thoroughly recommend this book. What can one say but ‘delight’ when the author lists The Shakespeare Insult Generator as a major help in creation? Enjoy. A full five hoofs up.

In Other Worlds - Margaret Atwood

Title: In Other Worlds – SF And The Human Imagination

Author: Margaret Atwood

Publisher: Virago             

Publish date: 2011

ISBN: 9781844087112

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Being neither fiction nor poetry, but a collection of essays and lectures, I feel out of place reviewing this but hey, it’s a book and I’m a reader. The collection explores Atwood’s lifelong obsession with Sci Fi and its influence on her writing.

As you can imagine, the prose does not disappoint. Quirky, imaginative, witty, incisive… All the Atwood usuals. But as far as readability goes, it’s abysmal. The book reminds me of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, a tome where this brilliant and restless mind shares with readers what books and influences went into the shaping of just such a mind. Theoretically it should be fascinating. But by its nature, it’s fragmented. Reading both the Biographia and In Other Worlds I feel I’m in a continual movie-time travel sequence, flashing from one point to another amidst jagged spurts of lightning. One sentence jumps from the next in tangential acrobatics, leaving you either agreeing, disagreeing or baffled, but without any holdfast or continuation. It’s like wandering about in an endlessly extended and built-upon castle complex without any idea which room you’re coming to next, where you’ve left and certainly not anything about where you’re going to come out at the end. Ok, supposedly, things are grouped into sections. There’s even an introduction (by Atwood), pointing out the organization. This raises alarm bells in the first instance, and turns out they’re justified. If you need an introduction to explain something, the explanation’s obviously not there in the text.

However, if you are game to follow through, go for it. More than enough food for thought for an evening in a quarter of a paragraph. It would be a good book for fans to acquire, and perhaps dip into a few pages at a time and mull over. Borrowing it from the library and chewing through in a few days as I did isn’t the best approach. If Sci Fi is your genre, it should probably be almost compulsory reading, just for the necessary discussions on what the genre is and isn’t (not that it comes to any conclusions or dogmatic precepts).

Alas, for readability per se, a mere one moose hoof up out of five. (Sniff.) For brilliance and potential inspiration and sheer insanity – such as leaping in one bound from Zeus to Wonder Woman’s belt -  and suggesting an overwhelming wealth of reading material and literary and cultural connections, five moose hoofs up out of five. You’ve got to want the insanity and brilliance to want to read it.