Any regular reader of this blog knows that I credit Margaret Atwood with making me understand exactly what feminism is.  When I read The Handmaid's Tale in college, I was finally able to see clearly how high the stakes for women are in a society that oppresses and controls them.  But Atwood is more than just a feminist author.  Many of her works also address environmental justice, and indeed how issues of environmental Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, and culminating in her latest book, MaddAddam.

justice are linked to forms of oppression such as classism and sexism.  None of her work displays this as strongly as the MaddAddam trilogy, beginning in

MaddAddam picks up the stories of both the MaddAddamites and God's Gardeners-one, the scientific and technological geniuses behind both the new humans known as Crakers, and the plgue that wiped out most of the population; the other, the eco-cult started by Adam One to teach people how to live without the technology that was invading their lives and ruining the planet.   In the wake of the plague, the two groups have come together in an attempt to create a sustainable existence on the remnants of the world they knew.  Their survival is threatened by a couple of ultra-violent psychopaths whose humanity has been drilled out of them through painballing, a "sport" where criminals were given the option to fight to the death rather than be locked up in prison.  Surviving the painball arena meant becoming a cold blooded killer, and survival at any cost became the only goal.  The survivors must be constantly on the lookout for these men, not just for their own sake, but for the safety and survival of the Crakers, the not-quite-human creations of Crake, who were genetically designed to have no need of or desire for violence, and would be wiped out by contact with the painballers.

I see the painballers as a symbol for all of the violent and soulless influences of modern society that Atwood writes about with such disdain and horror.  Atwood has set up an interesting duality within the book, between the non-violent Crakers, and the ultra-violent Painballers.  The other survivors find themselves existing somewhere between these two extremes.  In killing the painballers, the survivors are in essence killing off the last vestiges of the old, violent world they lived in.  This frees them to define how they will choose to live going forward.  Will they revert back to old ways of gaining and keeping power over others, or will they create a more egalitarian way of living.  And where do the Crakers fit in?  With most of humanity gone, are they now free to live an populate the world with their kind?

To be honest, while the Crakers are certainly endearing, there is much about their existence that would be unsatisfying.  Controlled by strong biological urges for mating, lacking in art or intellectualism, their lives read more like the lives of animals than humans.  I believe that Atwood uses the Crakers to show that while there is much about human behavior that is concerning and possibly dangerous, taking away those same qualities would be to take away what it is that makes us human.

I found it interesting that so much of the book dealt with Zeb, and how he came to be a part of God's Gardeners.  Zeb is introduced in The Year of the Flood, and never really seemed to fit in with the peaceful, gentle God's Gardeners.  But Zeb's story clears up some of the unanswered questions from both Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, namely the connection between Adam One and Crake.  MaddAddam brings a satisfying completeness to the story, but it does not leave the reader without some questions.  Three of the women were pregnant with Craker babies.  How would those children, provided they survive, change the dynamic of the group?  And is that the future of humankind?  By the end of the book, the Crakers are beginning to evolve intellectually and socially, and I couldn't help but wonder what their future society might be like.  Will they be able to keep their innocence and peacefulness, or would the old human traits of greed and the desire for power creep back into what is left of humanity. As usual, Atwood has delivered a provocative story highlighting some scary possibilities for the future of our world.  

Top Ten Books With Staying Power

This week's Top Ten List (hosted by The Broke and the Bookish) asks us to choose ten books written in the last decade (or so) that we hope people will still be reading in 30 years time.  Since I haven't done a Top Ten in a while, this seemed like a good week to jump back in.  I mean, basically I just have to list my ten favorite books of the last ten years right?

As it turns out, wrong.  There is a difference between a book that you loved personally and one that you think that people should still be reading in 30 years.  For that kind of staying power it should be something that speaks to our common humanity and portrays something important about our society at large, in my humble opinion.  So, I have created a list not just of books that I love (though I do love them all), but that I think have something important to say about the human experience and the societies we create.

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Mosseini-The eradication of the oppression of women is a major indicator of a society becoming more developed, and this book shows us why.

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins-Yes, I know it's YA and people are probably tired of hearing about it, but this book is so full of social commentary that I hope teachers are actively teaching with it 30 years from now-and that we have not yet taken our voyeurism and "reality" tv to that extreme.

The Harry Potter Series-Basically for the same reason as The Hunger Games.  Underlying the magic and whimsical elements is a solid foundation of social justice and equality.

The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger-OK, this one is mostly on the list just because I loved it so, but it does have some interesting things to say about the nature of relationships.

Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood-What The Handmaid's Tale did in highlighting reproductive choice, these books do for environmental issues, with some feminism thrown in.

Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich-This book puts the lie to the conservative claim that if you have a job and work hard you will get ahead in American.  Not if you are working for minimum wage, and Ehrenreich lived it to prove it.

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak-Amazingly beautiful, heart-breaking, transcendent and brutal, reading this book made me understand how the Nazi's affected the everyday German, and it is a great picture of courage.

Monster, Walter Dean Myers-Another YA title, this book illuminates the way that poverty and the need to survive can make people act against their own interests, and how incarceration affects teens.

The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood

There are some authors whose books I will read regardless of what they are about.  Often, I don't even know what they are about, because if I see the author's name on the cover I don't even bother to read the synopsis.  There aren't many of them, but one of my must-read authors is Margaret Atwood.  Ever since reading The Handmaid's Tale in college I have been a huge fan of her work.  The Handmaid's Tale literally changed my life.  Before then, I called myself a feminist because I was raised to believe that men and women are equal, but I had never really thought deeply about the issues that kept women from being full participants in the world's political and social realms.  Reading The Handmaid's Tale was an "ah ha" moment for me, when I began to truly understand the moral and ethical questions behind feminism specifically, and social justice movements in general. While none of her other books has had quite the same effect on me, I have read all of them with a sense of wonder and admiration at Atwood's ability to create characters and stories that examine some of our most complex social dilemmas, not to mention her ability to use language in a way that is sometimes raw and powerful, and other times transcendentally beautiful.

The Year of the Flood is her latest novel, and it is a "sequel" to her novel Oryx and Crake, though much of it takes place during the same time period as the first, focusing on different characters.  The novel is set in the not-so-distant future, when corporations have attained global dominance, and the planet is quickly apporaching ecological disaster.  It is centered around two female protagonists, Ren and Toby.  Both become a part of an eco-cult called God's Gardeners, a group who eschews the technological advances of modern society and preaches a return to the days when food actually came from nature and people were not treated as fodder-either labor or consumer- for the large corporations.  They believe that a "waterless flood" is coming, one that will sweep away all of mankind's corruption of the natural world, and they want to be prepared when it does.

As dystopian fiction goes, Atwood's near-future is as gritty and dark as can be imagined.  Human depredation has reached new levels, with the corporations greedily commodatizing all aspects of human life, including the sex trade and drug trafficking.  Most of the population lives on the edges of society, scraping by in whatever way-legal or illegal-they can find.  Anyone who runs afoul of the corporations can find themselves snatched off the street by the CorpSeCorp, the security arm of the multinationals that has replaced the armed forces and police.  While the richest and smartest live in walled compounds run by the corporations, the rest are left in slums called the "pleebs".  In the dangerous, crime-ridden world of the pleebs, helping your neighbor is likely to get you arrested or killed, and so a self-defeating selfishness has become the norm.  Like all repressive governments, the complete control of the CorpSeCorp has turned person again person, causing them to act in ways that are against their own interest.

As speculative fiction goes, I sincerely hope that the future Atwood envisions is wrong, wrong, wrong.  Sadly, too much of it felt completely possible to me.  From genetic manipulation to the power of the corporations to the suppression of dissent and the oppression of the people in the name of making money-all too close to reality.  In addition, now that most reputable scientists and rational people have come to accept global warming as a fact, it is not too much of a stretch to think that the destruction of the natural world that prefaces so much of what happens in the book could be around the corner.

Sounds depressing, right?  And this book certainly has its highs and lows in terms of emotional impact.  But ultimately there is hope.  When the "waterless" flood finally comes, those people who learned about the natural world and how to survive without technology and consumer goods were able to survive the chaos of the de-evolution of our society, and were able to begin rebuilding a world more in balance with nature.  As The Year of the Flood ends, the survivors are still finding each other, and I can't help but wonder what the next months and years hold for them.  Several websites I've found have described this book as the second in the MaddAdam trilogy, so I assume that I may yet get my wish to find out if there is indeed hope for the future-of Atwood's fictional society, and for ours.

The Divide, Nicholas Evans

I had never planned to read a Nicholas Evans book.  I saw the movie of The Horse Whisperer, and while I love all things Redford (I've had a crush on him since The Sting), I thought the story was only so-so.  It all felt a little too Lifetime Movie for me.  But then, one day at school, I was alone in the teachers' lounge, bored, and there it was, The Divide.  Someone had left it on the table, our universal sign for these cookies/chips/magazines/books are fair game.  I will admit I was so desperate for something to read I didn't even peruse the dust jacket.  For the first chapter I thought it was going to be the story of a man and his son lost in the wilderness after a skiing accident (it's not).  300ish pages later I know what it is about, but I'm still not sure I would plan to read a Nicholas Evans book.

The Divide is the story of a family torn apart by...well, I'm not really sure.  The husband being oversexed, or the wife's indifference to sex in general?  Mid-life crisis?  Thwarted dreams, both his and hers?  Whatever it was that brings this couple to the point of divorce, it really does a number on their daughter, Abbie.  She falls in with eco-terrrorists, does bad things, ends up on the run, and then ends up dead.  I'm not really spoiling anything for you with the above sentence.  All of this the author tells you in the first 50 pages or so.  He then spends the next eternity...I mean, 200 pages or so-explaining how the above mentioned things happened.  After the excitement and drama of the first several chapters, it felt a little like driving behind someone going 10 miles below the speed limit on a two lane road with no passing lane.

Despite this, I persevered, because the story was just engaging enough to keep me hooked.  The last 70 pages or so were actually quite good, and if Evans had told the beginning of this family's story at the same pace the novel would have been quite improved (and about 100 pages shorter).  The book does offer some interesting commentary on eco-terrorism, and why so many wealthy, privileged young adults reject their upbringing and turn to extremism (think Patty Hearst).  The fact that I didn't really like most of the characters probably didn't help.  I found the father a little clueless and indulgent, the mother cold and distant, and the daughter spoiled and selfish.  The son, who had previously been the "problem" child, was the only one I had much sympathy for in the end.  And the character of Ty was just too good to be true-methinks that Mr. Evans, who interestingly enough is actually English, has a little thing for American cowboys!  More bromance than Brokeback, but still...Overall, this was an OK read.  Not great, and not enough that I will go out of my way to pick up another of Evans' books.  Now, if one happens to be left on the table when I'm bored, well, then all bets are off.