Oryx and Crake, Book 1 of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy, works just barely; her sheer force as a story teller and master at the structure of the novel carry it over the finish line.
This novel is dystopian and post-apocalyptic. So it comes with certain expectations. Atwood formally provides them: our current problems and challenges are blown up to full scale, life ending crises. Atwood does this, but she still has one foot in this world, and it shows. This novel was written in 2004, yet she stresses that characters are emailing each other. Really? By 2004, email should not have to be explained as some future form of communication.
Generally, she is not adept at creating the vocabulary, the titles and diction of her future world. Why would Americans call its lower class neighborhoods “pleeblands” when plebeian is not a world we currently use, or are likely to use? Americans shy from class terminology. Why use the word “CorpSeCorps” for Corporation Security Corps? It is not an apparent title (I had to look it up) and gets snared on the tongue. It does not live like a spoken word.
So, Atwood does not rise to the occasion of the world she has created. The story is solid, but the bricks she uses to construct it don’t quite always adhere.
This novel is dystopian and post-apocalyptic. So it comes with certain expectations. Atwood formally provides them: our current problems and challenges are blown up to full scale, life ending crises. Atwood does this, but she still has one foot in this world, and it shows. This novel was written in 2004, yet she stresses that characters are emailing each other. Really? By 2004, email should not have to be explained as some future form of communication.
Generally, she is not adept at creating the vocabulary, the titles and diction of her future world. Why would Americans call its lower class neighborhoods “pleeblands” when plebeian is not a world we currently use, or are likely to use? Americans shy from class terminology. Why use the word “CorpSeCorps” for Corporation Security Corps? It is not an apparent title (I had to look it up) and gets snared on the tongue. It does not live like a spoken word.
So, Atwood does not rise to the occasion of the world she has created. The story is solid, but the bricks she uses to construct it don’t quite always adhere.
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