A review of MaddAddam

Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy has asked us to ignore some pretty blatant coincidences in its effort to extend from a first standalone novel to an ongoing series, the most onerous of which is to believe that quite a lot of people who all knew each other managed to survive an apocalypse and then run into each other after. Characters may have been far-flung, estranged or just plain unlikely to survive, but regardless, they manage to evade a human-race-threatening event and also find each other on the other side. Since the novels run in two timelines, past and present, it helps matters a lot when folks you met in one character's telling of the past pop up in another's or in a third character's future. And because you get the sense that the novels are much more interested in the world they're describing than the people (with the possible exception of Oryx and Crake's Snowman/Jimmy), it's been possible, if not entirely comfortable, to let go of unlikelihood of this bunch of people's good fortune. However, that falls down in MaddAddam when (SPOILER) Zeb shows up, as a mouthpiece for Adam's past and one half of a central love story with The Year of the Flood's main protagonist Toby.

Coincidence that's already been stretched as thin as the finest gourmet filo pastry finally snaps with the arrival of Zeb, particularly since his relationship with Toby also seems very unlikely. In the previous book, Toby entertained ideas of Zeb that seemed no more than a passing interest. In this one, the relationship takes centre-stage and it feels like that moment in the third movie of a trilogy where you realise that the new director has decided that the story just "needs" a love connection. It's a manufactured happy ending that feels false from the beginning, so much so that even Toby has her doubts about the whole thing. And in a way, this shoehorned romance sums up what's wrong with the whole book. Elements that were uncomfortable in The Year of the Flood - the unlikely coincidences, the shallow characterisations and frequently clunky plot points - are now unbearable in a third installment.

The world that Atwood's created is still fascinating, clever and funny, full of satirical pokes and parodies of our own lives like the cult preacher whose sexual deviancies run to visceral re-enactments of historical female torture like the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots - "feel this hot red-head spurt!". But while thinning plot material and broad stroke characters could be ignored for a little while, they can't be ignored forever.

The only thing that shines in MaddAddam is the Crakers, the genetically-engineered human beings created in an effort to fix everything that's wrong with the humans the world's already got. A deeper understanding of their emerging culture (despite Crake's attempts to stop them from having one) provide the most interesting sections of the book and the idea that they would be able to talk to the Pigoons - genetic splices of humans and pigs - is exploited for both funny and discomfiting episodes.

Even the smiling, singing Crakers can't save the whole book though. While MaddAddam is still an enjoyable read, it fails to live up to the promise of Oryx and Crake. The supposedly climactic face-off battle is inexplicably abandoned halfway through and then finished off in a flashback that also includes a wishy-washy happily ever after round-up for the remaining survivors - a disappointing end to a disappointing finale.