She gives us something better.
In the previous two books, Atwood shows the destruction of a world through two different viewpoints. In Oryx and Crake, we see the world inside the corporate compounds and are drawn close to the master of the apocalypse, Glenn/Crake, through the narrative of his childhood friend, Jimmy. In the Year of the Flood, the world is further explored outside the compounds, in the black market free-for-all known as the Pleeblands through a resistant movement known as God's Gardeners. As the story concludes in The Year of the Flood, the characters in two seemingly unrelated stories turn out to be very intertwined through their pasts and are joined up again in the present, post-apocalyptic world. As it turns out, even the dystopic world is a little too small for comfort.
For most readers, myself included, the anticipation leading up to the release of MaddAddam is the question as to how these characters will deal with their sudden re-acquaintance as well as to continue living in the pre-virus world of the past. This expectation toward drama and conclusion is precisely what Atwood refuses to deliver in the third book of her trilogy. After I get over my own frustration at not receiving what I wanted/expected, I realize that Atwood's approach moves the story much further forward, and offers a stronger and fuller message than if she were to stick with the approach present in the previous books. This is why:
1. The world the previous characters have known has ended. As much as I want to go back, as a reader, and continue exploring the corruption, greed and violence that led to the present collapse, it is pointless. I have already been back in that world twice. If this book seems to lack the intricate plot and complex characters of the previous two, is it perhaps because the day ins and outs of survival can be boring?
2. The questions the characters (and the readers) are struggling to understand are unanswerable. Why did Crake kill Oryx? What were the motivations and reasons behind Crake's destruction of humankind? What happened to all the other characters that didn't survive? Why did they have to die? Are they still out there somewhere? To be given conclusion to these questions would not be honest to the present world the characters are struggling through. Crake is dead and unfortunately, he didn't write his motivations into a journal. Families with a missing loved one rarely receive conclusive news that their husband/wife/child is in fact dead. This is one of the reasons this dystopia is so believable. Just like us in everydaylife, the characters in MaddAddam have to deal with the frustratingly unanswerable and choose what to do moving forward (if they do, in fact, chose to move forward).
3. Finally, and perhaps the most important reason why Atwood's approach with this book and reader expectations is incredibly well crafted: this is not a story about Jimmy, Toby, Ren, Amanda or any of the other previous characters we have know and may or may not have loved. Everything we need to understand these characters has been given in the previous two books. Their stories are about the ending of the world that they knew and their luck (or unluck) at ending up in the present time of post-apocalypse. MaddAddam is about the future, about life after the dust settles, about the building of mythology and culture, and the adaptability of humankind and the strength to move forward even in the midst of extinction and tragedy.
The more I think about what Atwood is doing in this novel, the more I love it. There is beauty in the simplicity. The exchanges between the survivors and the Crakers is hilarious and endearing. Atwood captures the irritating frustration adults sometimes feel when faced with the insatiable 'why' of a child piecing together their world. Her skill in first building a complicated world falling apart and then speculating how to see that world through the new eyes of a different culture is brilliant.
As others have mentioned, this is not a stand-alone book. You will need to read the previous two books to gain the backstory on the characters and the plot. I enjoyed this book and highly recommend the whole trilogy to anyone who likes dystopia or speculative fiction.
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