Well, I’ve been absolutely dreadful about keeping up with the Classics Club challenge.  I am planning an update for next week, but it won’t be pretty.  To be honest, life has become so hectic lately that I barely remember what I put on my Classics Club list – let alone actually spend time reading the books and blogging about them.  I want to get better about it though, so I am recommitting to the challenge, and to keep myself engaged I’m also planning to respond to the monthly memes.  February’s question is a good one:

What about modern classics? Pick a book published since 2000 and say why you think it will be considered as a “classic” in the future.

When I hear the phrase “modern classic,” the first thing that pops into my head is a name: Margaret Atwood.  I think her entire oeuvre is destined to be considered classic one day.  Maybe some of it already is – The Handmaid’s Tale, for instance, which was published in 1985 and therefore is not responsive to this question (although it is less than 50 years old, so wouldn’t qualify for the regular Classics Club challenge either).  It took me awhile to get my head in a place where I could really appreciate Atwood, but once I got there I blazed through five of her books in 2013-14.  So for this question, I’m going to cheat just a little bit and name, instead of just one book, a trilogy.  Specifically, the MaddAddam Trilogy:

Oryx and Crake (published 2003)
The Year of the Flood (published 2009)
MaddAddam (published 2013)

There is just so much in these books that I can’t see how future readers could fail to consider them classics.  So much about genetics, science, media, corporate responsibility, religion, relationships… There’s humor, especially in MaddAddam – Toby recounting Zeb’s life story to the Crakers made for some of my favorite moments of the entire trilogy.  “Yes, good kind Crake.  Please stop singing.”  There’s phenomenal descriptive writing and astounding creativity.  There are some of the best drawn characters I’ve ever encountered – Zeb, Toby, Adam One, Snowman, Crake…   And all of that good stuff is wrapped up in a really fantastic story that keeps getting bigger with each book.

My one complaint about the trilogy is the depiction of child abuse in Oryx and Crake.  I’ve come a ways as a reader and I’m no longer put off by difficult subjects or upsetting imagery if it advances the story.  (Exhibit A: The Handmaid’s Tale.)  But I didn’t think the child abuse was at all necessary for the plot of Oryx and Crake – the same messages about the media could easily have been conveyed by some other means – and as a mom, it really, really bugged me.  (Actually, I think those scenes – and there were not many of them; it really was a small part of the book – would have bugged me even if I wasn’t a mom.)  It’s also possible that, for all I’ve grown to be able to work through difficult topics, child abuse may just be one of those topics that I am never going to want to touch with a ten foot pole, and I do think it’s okay to have certain preferences as a reader.  But that’s really my only gripe about the MaddAddam trilogy – a small sub-plot in the first book, which never pops up again.

So that’s my answer for the February meme.  I think the MaddAddam Trilogy has all the makings of a classic: outstanding writing, magnificent plot and characters, and food for thought on every page.  And now I want to go back and re-read MaddAddam, which was my favorite of the three.

What “modern” book do you think is destined for classichood?